Internet based transmission substation monitoring

At the recent IEEE T&D Conference & Exposition held in 1996 in Los Angeles, the authors presented the development of an on-line distributed informatio n monitoring system for keeping track of the condition of HV equipment in t ransmission sub-stations, such as status of each SF6 circuit breaker (CB) t ogether with other operational parameters, transformer temperature, capacit or bank unbalanced currents and auxiliaries including pumps, batteries and compressors etc. Each group of CBs is monitored by a standalone microcontro ller where Information can be exchanged between them on a local area networ k. Recently, a sub-station for the new Hong Kong International Airport was constructed revealing the shortfalls of the existing system because the sub -station had been too remote from the maintenance centres. The engineers in charge of transmission need to know not only the real-time status of equip ment but also the security and fire safety of tbe substation. Furthermore, organisations involved in airport operation need to gain access to the info rmation as well. Therefore, the original information system has been enhanc ed and extended by giving up the old idea of using modem based one-to-one c ommunication and replacing it by an Internet based client server concept. T he idea of remote vision for sub-station monitoring is also employed for in tegration with the Internet based system.