Introduction: The scope of the project is to develop and demonstrate an expert system “SINE Post” for the more efficient location of overhead line faults, improved assessment of circuit breaker maintenance requirements and the improved assessment of power system harmonics, before and after DG/LCTs have connected to the distribution network. This system will overcome current business challenges due to limited numbers of experts and the labour-intensive time needed to carry out some power quality monitoring-related tasks at present. This is expected to lead to benefits for SPEN’s business and our customers through more efficient operations, environmental benefits by facilitating DG/LCT connections more quickly and cheaply and network performance improvements for customers (SPEN locating OHL faults more effectively).

Objectives:

SINE Post has the following objectives:

• Development and demonstration of an IT and hardware architecture (infrastructure and interfaces) that will allow data to be gathered from remote sites, processed efficiently and used, together with data from existing systems (such as GIS), to unlock business planning and operational efficiencies;
• Use data sets from multiple sources corroboratively to support planning and operational decisions;
• Trial various communications methods to assess their reliability, compliance and performance as enablers for gathering data into the expert system;
• Understand and document the effectiveness of developing and demonstrating SINE Post for 11kV fault location, CB maintenance decisions and harmonic analysis.

By achieving these objectives SPEN expects SINE Post to deliver customer service, financial and environmental benefits.

Expected Benefits: It is expected that SINE Post will be successful if the following outcomes can be returned:

• A fully functional IT and hardware system facilitating the gathering of data from multiple remote sites and exchanging autonomously it between key corporate systems;
• Demonstrate that data for multiple sources can be use in a complementary way to support planning and operational decisions;
• Reliable communication channels established between the PQMs and the SINE Post system;
• Updated business case that outlines the performance improvements from SINE Post to inform UK DNOs of it suitability for BaU adoption.