UK Power Networks (UKPN) is rolling out “self-healing” restoration software across its extra high voltage networks in the South East and East of England.
The Primary Outage Restoration Tool (PORT) developed in partnership with GE Digital has already been deployed at around 210 primary substations serving two million customers in the South East and is planned to be rolled out to another 460 sites across the East of England serving 3.63 million customers.
The new software uses the same engine as UKPN’s first generation Adaptive Power Restoration System (APRS) which provides automated restoration for its high voltage 11,000 and 6,000-volt networks. PORT extends this capability to its 33,000 and 132,000-volt networks, rerouting power supplies via the 11,000-volt network following a fault.
John Duller, controls systems and automation manager at UKPN, said: “Over the years we have invested in remotely controlled devices and automatic schemes to restore supplies quicker to homes and businesses, which depend on this essential infrastructure.
“Two EHV circuits normally feed a primary electricity substation, which typically serves between 10,000 and 20,000 customers. If one is out for maintenance and a fault occurs on the other circuit, protection isolates the fault then PORT analyses the outage and alternative circuits.
“It then keeps restoring supplies until it can no longer do anything else. If we were working by hand on the control desk, we would need to restore supplies in sequence. PORT can run all the checks in parallel to get most supplies back within three minutes.
“The development of an extra high voltage APRS, known as PORT, continues the collaboration with GE to be worldwide industry leaders in the field.”
UKPN said PORT has no limit on the number of actions it can perform but noted that during one event it carried out 23 remote control switches operation within three minutes. For comparison, manually rerouting power supplies can take 30 minutes or more to complete.
Before restoring power, the software completes safety checks covering load, recent switching and whether there have been people on site. The system can also be used to plan outages, allowing engineers to simulate what would happen in power is lost a site and identify and address any issues with the contingency arrangements.