IMPROVING THE SITUATION AWARENESS OF DSOS IN MAJOR DISTURBANCES BY VISUALIZING THE STATE OF MOBILE NETWORKS

The interdependency of distribution and mobile networks causes issues in the recovery process of major disturbances as the mobile network is necessary for some distribution automation devices and for repair group communication. Mobile networks go down quickly after a power outage complicating the recovery process. In this paper a situation awareness (SA) system demonstration with a visualized state of both distribution and mobile networks is presented. The aim of the system is to improve the recovery times and reduce the outage costs by improving the mobile networks SA of DSOs and other actors during outages. SITUATION AWARENESS IN MAJOR DISTURBANCES OF ELECTRICITY SUPPLY The storms of summer of 2010 and the storm Tapani in 2011 caused major disturbances of electricity supply in Finland. The power outages caused by the storms lasted in some cases for several weeks. The outages also affected mobile networks causing issues with the communication. For example the communication between control center and both distribution automation and repair groups was difficult. A common thing in these major disturbances was that they affected a large part of DSO's customers and multiple actors such as rescue services and municipalities participated in the recovery process in addition to DSOs. One observation from the major disturbances has been that the information exchange during the disturbances is difficult. In 2013 the Finnish Electricity Market Act was changed and now requires e.g. the DSOs to provide information about the situation in order to increase the SA of actors such as the telecommunication operators and rescue services during disturbances. Several projects were started in Finland to improve the information exchange and SA during the major disturbances of electricity supply. [1]–[3] A concept of SA system for managing disturbances of electricity supply, described in [3], has been extended in this paper. The objective of the system is to improve the information exchange between actors during disturbances of electricity supply in order to improve the recover times and reduce the costs caused by the disturbance. The extended system improves the SA of actors by providing a visualized state of the mobile networks. SITUATION AWARENESS IN MAJOR DISTURBANCES OF ELECTRICITY During major disturbances of electricity supply there are many different actors working together in order to achieve a common goal; recovering from the disturbance. Currently the majority of SA forms based on the information provided by the DSOs' Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system and Distribution Management System (DMS). The DSOs' own SA is mostly based on these systems as they are used in daily operation. Other actors' outage SA is based on systems built on top of DSOs' systems. In Finland most DSOs provide a disturbance web page service to provide information about the affected areas during outages and maintenances. Some DSOs provide a direct access to the DMS view to some actors. The problem with these systems is that they are either inaccurate or difficult to use. [3] The mobile network is important during the recovery process. Currently the mobile network SA of DSOs in power outages is low. Finnish communication regulatory authority (FICORA) requires that the telecommunication operators must provide customers information about the disturbances in the network. FICORA has set minimum information accuracy requirements for the telecommunication operators but the set limit is low. The accuracy of provided information between operators varies a lot. Some operators provide information about the affected base station and the approximate coverage areas of the affected base station. Others still only provide information about the disturbances in municipality level accuracy or lower. Such information cannot be used to make decisions during outages. [5] INTERDEPENDENCIES BETWEEN ELECTRICITY AND MOBILE NETWORK Electricity distribution and mobile networks are interdependent. Nowadays the mobile network is utilized in multiple ways in distribution networks such as distribution automation (DA) and communication with repair groups. DA devices improve the outage recover times. The amount of DA devices in the distribution network has increased in recent years. After the introduction of remote connection to the substations the utilization of remote controlled disconnectors started. Nowadays in addition to these devices a connection is also needed for automatic meter reading (AMR). The connection between control center and DA devices is often based on mobile network technologies. Powerline communication (PLC) is also used together with mobile network (e.g. for AMR meters). These connections also CIRED Workshop Helsinki 14-15 June 2016