Can the power grid "self heal" in the face of disasters and accidents

Recently, the strong typhoon "Mangkhut" has hit, severely affecting people's work and life wherever it passes. It is reported that "Mangkhut" is a strong typhoon that has made landfall in China since 2018, and it is also the typhoon that has had a significant impact on the overall Pearl River Delta since Typhoon Hope in 1979. During the transit of "mountain bamboo", many places along the southeast coast of China experienced water and power outages. According to statistics, as of 18:00 on September 17th, the number of affected users in Guangdong power grid has reached 4.45 million. With the departure of "Mangkhut", although the harm caused by disasters has gradually been reduced, facing disaster weather, how to do preventive maintenance, formulate effective response strategies, and be able to quickly repair equipment and places that have faults or accidents when disasters occur should be the thoughts left by "Mangkhut" for every power worker.

Power grid failures caused by weather or equipment malfunctions are not uncommon, not just floods, storms, fires, hurricanes, or heat waves. Even a small equipment failure can result in unimaginable consequences. For example, Singapore recently experienced a large-scale power outage in the past 14 years, causing nearly 150000 people in 19 regions to fall into darkness. The culprit was actually a safety valve of a natural gas receiving equipment (which loosened, causing a natural gas supply interruption and causing three power plants to stop generating electricity).

For example, the southern part of Australia, with its vast territory, experiences two accident prone periods every year: frequent forest fires in summer; Rainstorm, thunder and lightning frequently occur in autumn, and gales rage. After the power interruption, users can only regain power supply until the fault location is identified and a replacement power source is put into use, which seriously affects the normal operation of residential and critical infrastructure. However, fault diagnosis is quite difficult, especially in remote rural areas, and the time consumption will increase. If faults on overhead power lines are not quickly located, cut off, and isolated, it may even cause forest fires and pose a public safety hazard to the high proportion of overhead power lines in the region.

So, in the face of power grid failures caused by disasters and emergencies, how should we restore power as soon as possible, provide early warning and effective prevention of possible failures, and make the power grid more flexible and operational? In the face of frequent severe weather, South Australia Power Company has adopted Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure Grid Distribution Management System ADMS to address the challenges. This system can achieve various functions such as grid monitoring, network performance analysis, fault management, and grid optimization and planning. Its application helps to improve the system's self-healing ability and reliability, enhance grid operation efficiency, optimize asset management and grid operation, reduce power loss and lower operating costs, continuously provide clear historical, real-time, and predictive views of the distribution network, and access consistent distribution network data, making it easy for staff to work as a team. The South Australian power grid has also changed the previous situation where staff needed to spend several hours to reach the fault site for maintenance. Even in the event of an accident, potential or existing faults in the power grid can be quickly isolated and repaired. The self-healing ability of the power grid has been greatly improved, thereby minimizing the impact of weather.

As a digital transformation player in the fields of energy efficiency management and automation, Schneider Electric believes that with the increasingly urgent demand for digital and intelligent distribution technology on the electricity side, self-healing has become an important component of the many advantages of future smart grids, bearing the responsibility of ensuring power supply continuity. As a key link in the "three remote" technology of distribution network (remote signaling, telemetry, and remote control of distribution system), self-healing control can timely detect and isolate faults in the circuit, maintain normal operation in non fault areas, significantly shorten power outage time, and greatly improve power supply quality and continuity.

At present, Schneider Electric is leveraging the EcoStruxure Grid architecture based on the Internet of Things to solidify its power distribution technology and solutions through digital innovation in interconnected products, edge control, application, analysis, and service layers. It aims to upgrade the self-healing, safety, economy, and cleanliness performance of the power grid, assist distribution companies in improving power supply continuity and safety, and ensure more reliable and flexible power grid operations, thereby greatly reducing the harm of natural disasters and accidents to the power grid, as well as the impact on people's lives and work.