Enhancing Faults Monitoring in Secondary Electrical Distribution Network

Inefficient fault management in electrical Secondary Distribution Network (SDN) is one of the major challenges facing most power utility companies around the world including Tanzania. Currently, faults management processes from detection to clearance are done manually due to the lack of visibility in SDN resulting to long Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) and high operational costs. Advancements in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and sensing technologies have made it possible to have cost effective electrical power network visibility solutions. This study proposes algorithms that enhance fault detection and monitoring in the Tanzania SDN based on distributed processing architecture. The proposed algorithms include sensing and data acquisition, fault detection, localization and visualization. The algorithms were deployed and tested on live network at University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Kijitonyama Campus.