Condition monitoring system for circuit breaker based on substation automation system

Condition monitoring of circuit breaker is preference for cost saving in power utilities. However, extensive condition monitoring of circuit breaker is a hard task considering its tremendous number. Circuit breaker time, which is composed of opening time and arcing time, as well as its variation trends, can be used as an index to represent condition of mechanical and dielectric component of circuit breaker. Since the digital relay and digital fault recorder that can record dynamic process of circuit breaker operation, it is especially attractive to extract this data for circuit breaker information without hardware investment. In order to deduce circuit breaker time with transient data logged in substation automation system, a substation automation information management system is developed in this paper. The transient data follows transient data transformation standard (COMTRADE) is concentrated in controlling center. The information management system parses the composition and format of the logged data according COMTRADE, hence calculate and visualize the circuit breaker time and its variation trends.

1. Introduction

Circuit breakers constitute an important and critical component in the electric power system. They are paramount to the quality of power being delivered, to the promotion of customer satisfaction and most important of all to the safety and integrity of the system [1].