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Abstract:
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Electricity surrounds us everywhere. Light, cooking appliances or electronic devices became an evidence for the world, but what people forget is that electricity has a big journey to undertake before getting to the little user. This journey is actually not an evidence and could be very dangerous due to high voltages or other problems. Electrical substations, one of the main parts of the electrical road, are exposed to many problems, among them partial discharge. Doble engineering created a product, the PDS100, to localise and measure this problem and in that way assure a safe and costless journey. In substations, a lot of expensive machinery and equipment are exposed to high voltage stress. If this circumstance is combined with ageing, deterioration of the equipment can happen which can lead to big accidents such as explosions. The PDS100 is used in proactive maintenance to detect problems at its early stages and in that way avoiding big accidents. The PDS100 is a very successful, accurate and functional product and a market leader in detecting partial discharge. Despite this, improvements on the product are possible. The product was designed some years ago and does not take advantage of the disruptive technologies that have appeared in the recent years. Improvements on the product, the usability and human interaction maintaining its accuracy are needed. A design for a new product that takes advantages of disruptive technologies such as augmented reality has been created. The final design is divided in three parts, one utility belt, called the backpack device, with the battery and the device itself that detects the partial discharge, a forearm wearable wearing a tablet for the interface and the handheld antenna. A prototype of the application has also been designed in order to simulate the different functionalities and features taking today’s expectations of interaction into consideration. The device is capable of saving measurements taken in the substations and associate it with the position where it has been taken. This makes the device able to compare between successive measurements made. The proposed design makes personalization possible for the purchaser and the user, depending on their needs, by being able to choose between two different tablets, to improve the location system by adding a DGPS receiver, to choose the position of the utility belt or the possibility of running the application in 2 or 3D views. In this project, the external aspect of the device, as well as the prototype of the application has been created. The internal part of the device, which will detect the partial discharge and use algorithms in order to determine how dangerous the situation is, will be provided by Doble engineers, as it goes beyond the boundaries of the project. A marketing and financial plan have been made to support the proposed design. This project can be seen as a first investigation to recreate a product that meets today’s standards, but further investigation is needed in some fields in order to reach the maximum potential of it. |
