Artificial intelligence empowers substations with 'thousand mile eyes'

Artificial intelligence empowers substations with 'thousand mile eyes'

*The safety of the power system is the cornerstone of economic development, and it is interconnected. Any accident in any link may cause a chain reaction, and even lead to catastrophic accidents such as the collapse of the entire network. And the substation is a key node connecting the backbone network and the distribution network, and its normal operation is related to the stability and safety of the entire power system.

In order to ensure power safety, the power grid operation department will monitor the real-time operation status of equipment in the substation, conduct regular inspections and maintenance. But currently, most of the inspection work still adopts traditional methods such as manual walking along the line and tower climbing, using telescopes, cameras, or video cameras to inspect hidden dangers along the line.

Peng Songbi said, "High labor costs, dangerous and harsh inspection environments, difficult quality assurance, and difficult inspection management make it difficult to reach some substations located in primitive forests or unmanned areas." There are many substations in China, and some are distributed in areas with harsh environments, with high labor inspection and duty costs, safety hazards, and long required time. Intelligent inspection robots can solve these problems.

According to him, in unmanned or few manned substations, inspection robots can replace human labor to inspect outdoor high-voltage equipment. It can automatically set and locate points, complete tasks, recognize and record instrument data in real-time. It has an infrared camera and a visible light camera, which can not only provide a comprehensive view of the device's operating status, accurately read the temperature and data of the voltmeter, ammeter, and transformer, but also sensitively detect hot spots through the infrared camera, timely detect abnormal conditions, automatically report alarms or perform pre-set fault handling. It operates flexibly and freely, can be raised and lowered, and truly plays a role in reducing personnel and increasing efficiency. It can improve the efficiency of manual inspection of substations by more than 4 times and undertake the work of more than 3 people.

In short, the inspection robot can achieve intelligent autonomous inspection covering the entire line, perform multiple inspection tasks at once, collect massive data, and greatly improve the quality of inspection. Electric power inspection personnel no longer personally inspect, and can receive all data from equipment while sitting in the office. Through robots, they can have a panoramic view of all the conditions of the substation, as if they have a "thousand mile eye".