Prioett -a project to increase safety in the power distribution supply
The project prio ett is a private-public collaboration project, that is run by the municipality of Karlskrona and financed by the Swedish Energy Agency. In the project, a new technique delivered by Radius is tested, to increase the safety and decrease the vulnerability of the society when a power failure occurs. The possibilities to deliver electricity to in advance prioritised users when an interruption occurs, are tested. These users can be a retirement home, a company or a housing area. The project started in August 2005 and will continue until 2008. Please go to the prio ett web page www.prioett.nu for more information. Please click here to read an article from Utility Weekly.
How it works
The main principle of prio ett is that a power distribution network should be able to be divided into smaller units. These units will be classified with different levels of priority. When a power shortage occurs, for example when there is a fault, the units that are not prioritised will be disconnected. This brings the possibility to create a balance in the network using the available voltage instead of disconnecting an entire geographical area. You can work with reinstallation in the same way, so that more areas can get their power back faster. Click here to see how it all works.
Priorities
In the first phase of the project, we focused on how to prioritise. What should be prioritised and who should decide what should be prioritised? Do some people need power more than others? Within the project, polls were made and workshops organized. There was a total agreement that emergency care, retirement homes, and other critical units in the society, should be prioritised when a power failure occurs. The logic in the system functions so that the priorities change with regards to many factors. Time of the week, time of the day and temperature are just a few examples of the kind on factors that affect how the voltage is divided if a power failure should occur. Click here for a simulation of the System.
Technical structure
By using a built-in logic and radio controlled units, the network will be switched by using an advance predetermined priority list. The system consists of the SCADA system Uni-View, a network concentrator and a couple of control units NMS 100. From a computer situated in the control room of Affärsverken, the system can be supervised and controlled. This is also the place for the priority list and logic systems. From Uni-View, every object can be remote-controlled and supervised. The computer is serially connected to the network concentrator, which communicates to all 13 slave units that are part of the control unit NMS 100, via a master radio. The NMS 100, which can control between one and three switches, is installed in substations stations in the power distribution network for Affärsverken. In this way we have 13 different areas that can be put on the priority list and be controlled totally independent.
The Swedish Energy Agency advocates prioritization in new report
The Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten) now finished their report about the possibility to prioritize in a new way – disconnecting certain areas depending on what priority they have been given instead of only use geographical aspects. The report that now has been handed over to the Swedish government, advocates the change in law that’s required to make this possible. They also suggest that the system should be tested in more regions and they also want to work out a plan for how to integrate this all over Sweden with the start date year 2011.
Printed on: 09 September 2010 18:48