Patent ID: 9689710
Date: 2017-06-27
CPC Classifications: G01D,Y04S

Claim:
1. A method for providing notification of an outage in a power distribution system, comprising: a) receiving, at a first node of a communication network in the power distribution system, (i) information identifying each of a plurality of second, neighboring nodes, and (ii) information identifying power distribution equipment from which each of the respective second nodes receives electric power; b) determining whether any of the second nodes has a battery backup; c) if at least one of the second nodes has a battery backup, recording one of the nodes having a battery backup as a designated node to which outage notification messages are to be transmitted; d) if none of the second nodes has a battery backup, determining whether any of the second nodes receives electric power from power distribution equipment other than the power distribution equipment from which the first communication node receives electric power, wherein step d) is performed iteratively for each of a plurality of different types of power distribution equipment until a second node is found that receives electric power from power distribution equipment other than power distribution equipment from which the first communication node receives electric power; e) if at least one of the second nodes receives electric power from power distribution equipment other than the power distribution equipment from which the first communication node receives electric power, ranking those second nodes that receive electric power from said other power distribution equipment according to a message transmission metric; f) recording the node having the highest rank as the designated node to which outage notification messages are to be transmitted; g) if none of the second nodes receives electric power from power distribution equipment other than the power distribution equipment from which the first communication node receives electric power, selecting one of the second nodes based on the message transmission metric, h) recording the selected node as the designated node to which outage notification messages are to be transmitted, i) detecting, at the first node, that a loss in power has occurred, and j) transmitting, from said first node, a power outage notification to the second node recorded as the designated node.