Fault Detection and Monitoring in Secondary Electric Distribution Network Based on Distributed Processing

Inefficient fault management is one of the major challenges facing the only electrical utility company, the Tanzania Electric Supply Company to ensure safe, reliable and efficient power supply in the electrical Secondary Distribution Network (SDN). Currently, faults management processes from detection to clearance are performed manually and therefore inefficient. There have been initiatives by utility electrical company to automate faults clearance in the transmission and primary distribution parts of the network using SCADA and DMS, which are largely centralized. However, due to the complexity and ubiquitous nature of the SDN, automation is still challenging. This study proposes a distributed processing architecture for automatic faults detection and monitoring for the Tanzanian electrical SDN as it has been identified to fit well in network monitoring compared to the centralized approach. The proposed architecture consists of remote sensing units, distributed central processing units, central monitoring and communication platform. The architecture was implemented and tested in live network at UDSM-Kijitonyama Campus and found to work well.