Romanian innovative system for power losses real time monitoring and analysis in electrical transmission and distribution systems

In the process of power supply to final consumers, an important amount of energy is lost in the transmission and distribution systems due to technological and non-technological losses. Technical losses represent an economic loss with environmental effects at national level, and its optimization should be performed from an overall national's perspective, regardless of the institutional organization of the sector and ownership of operating electricity utilities. The volume of energy losses in the power transmission and distribution systems is important, as it is generally up to 3 - 13%. The volume of power losses in Romanian power transmission and distribution systems is important, the level being of about double to the average in Europe. The current paper presents the research results of the authors regarding the real time monitoring and analysis systems for power losses, in electrical transmission and distribution systems.Within the research project, it was developed a dedicated system, successfully tested within a 5 years partnership with CNTEE “Transelectrica” - SA, on a transformer of 250/250/80MVA 400/121/20 kV from 400/110 kV Pelicanu Substation and respectively on the 400 kV overhead power line (118 km) Bucuresti Sud - Pelicanu.The tests results showed the importance of evaluation by real-time measurements, compared to the results of evaluations by calculations, of active power losses at power transformers and overhead power lines, respectively. Values several times higher were found for the values of active power losses measured online, in real time, than those determined by calculations.Online measurements have shown that there may be cases when large industrial consumers produce current and voltage harmonics well above the maximum allowable limits specified in the standards. The harmonics are transmitted practically undamped by the windings of the power transformers and on the transmission power lines (in the case of tests, even more than 100 km away from the place of their production).The online measurement of active power losses on the 400 kV overhead power line, 119 km, showed that corona losses are insignificant especially during periods of atmospheric humidity below 85%, and that active losses on power lines are practically resistive losses. The resistive losses on the measured high voltage overhead power lines are much higher than the calculated ones. The difference is determined by the fact that the calculation of active power losses on power lines includes the value of ohmic resistances of conductors evaluated based on line conductor resistivity or possibly based on ohmic resistance measured at a certain moment, and not the real value of the ohmic resistance of the line in real time (which changes over time due to the change in the state of the multitude of joints of the OHL conductor sections).