Cloud-Based Monitoring for SPDs using Advanced Measuring Methods for Lightning Disturbance

The increasing number of sensitive electrical equipment demands Surge Protective Devices (SPDs) with major challenges and a high degree of reliability. The enquiry for early-warning systems for unwanted and unexpected equipment failure is strongly rising over the last years. The integration of early warning systems as a condition monitoring in Industrial Internet of Things (1IoT) is in contrast to most of the common devices an unsolved subject in electric power distribution. This paper presents an advanced measuring method for lightning disturbance with cloud-based monitoring of SPDs. Due to an advanced bandwidth, this device is capable of the simultaneous measurement of low-energy Electromagnetic Interferences (EMI), high-energy lightning surge currents and finally long duration currents with amplitudes of about 300 A over several milliseconds. Therefore a new type of a retrofittable coreless current transformer has been developed. The induced signal is converted with a wide dynamic range and a linear frequency response. Results show that the signal is digitized with a high accuracy for the monitoring of SPDs to permit condition-oriented and predictive maintenance. The data transmission and storage is realized by a cloud solution and offers storage and Big Data processing options. The analysis allows an adaptation of iteratively improved aging models by increasing records of overvoltage events.