Proactive fault detection

Operation engineers noticed abnormally many starts (31 over the course of ~30 hours) of the directional earth fault protection for a feeder in one of their primary substations.

dLab’s analytics platform is based on dAnalyzer, a unique patented algorithm, automatically analyzing data in substations. Harnessing this data, operations can make faster fault detection, and – as in this case – get early warnings for imminent faults. This enables efficient operations and proactive maintenance.

The detected temporary recurring earth faults were nearly identical. The algorithm determined the origin of the directional earth fault protection to feeder 23. A start of the zero-sequence voltage protection for the feeding transformer was also identified.

An additional investigation of the substation connected to feeder 23 was initiated. There was apparently an occurrence of overload in a fuse load disconnector, where moisture had been a contributing factor.

A heat fan was installed in the substation as a temporary solution, while awaiting a new component. As a result, the team prevented an outage.