Communications-Capable Fault Indicators Improve Outage Response for Coastal Oregon

Overhead fault indicators have long been vital tools for utility line crews, helping them to find a faulted line section on a distribution circuit by providing local annunciation for where the fault occurred. Traditionally, a mechanical flag or light-emitting diode (LED) indication shows that the fault was detected by the sensor. Line crews have to patrol the lines by following the tripped sensors until the fault is no longer indicated and then backtracking down the line to find the faulted line section. This process can be time-consuming, which significantly slows outage recovery times in the densely forested and mountainous terrain of the Oregon coastline. By adding communications capabilities to these fault indicators, a centralized effort can be made for dispatching line crews, while providing precise fault details that are possible because there are several sources of information. Central Lincoln People's Utility District (PUD) is in the process of installing such a system and is expecting to see improvements to outage recovery times, crew dispatch management, situational awareness during outages, and post-event analysis through supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) integration. This paper discusses how the information provided by the overhead fault indicators will improve Central Lincoln PUD operations and includes lessons learned by the engineers and operators while installing and using the system. Being able to monitor overhead fault indicators via SCADA allows Central Lincoln PUD to reduce customer outage times, improve safety, and reduce risk to patrolling troubleshooters. By having fault indicators communicating through SCADA, Central Lincoln PUD is able to isolate and sectionalize the problem area much faster. Central Lincoln PUD operators can see the faulted indicators on a map in the SCADA system, and they are also notified about the faulted indicators via cell phone text messages that are sent to operations personnel, including troubleshooters. This allows the troubleshooters to minimize the area of line that needs to be patrolled, which in turn reduces outage times. An additional benefit to using the fault indicator device is a load-logging function that is tied to a historian. This load-logging function has been useful within the Central Lincoln PUD systems engineering planning department when reconfiguring distribution systems. A project of this magnitude does not come without its share of lessons learned. Central Lincoln PUD has grown from these lessons, which include design thoughts regarding proper configuration on all levels of installed devices, where and how to install not only the line sensors but also the radio links that provide the communications link between the field and SCADA, and other design lessons that are discussed in this paper.