H02H1/0092

ELECTRICAL OPERATING DEVICE AND METHOD FOR RECOGNIZING MALFUNCTIONS
20220244310 · 2022-08-04 ·

An electrical operating device includes measuring equipment for an electrical measured variable, and preprocessing equipment for digital measured values. The preprocessing equipment has an integrated circuit and an electronic memory component for configuring a logic circuit. A processor evaluates preprocessed measurement data and, on the basis of the evaluation, transmits data telegrams to other electrical operating devices. The preprocessing equipment calculates a respective checksum for a digital measured value, and the processor recognizes a malfunction from the measured value and the checksum of the measured value, and suppresses the evaluation and/or the transmission of the data telegrams in the event of a malfunction. There is also described a method for recognizing malfunctions.

Intelligent circuit breakers

A circuit breaker includes an electromechanical switch, a current sensor, a voltage sensor, and a processor. The electromechanical switch is serially connected between a line input terminal and a load output terminal of the circuit breaker, and configured to be placed in a switched-closed state or a switched-open state. The current sensor is configured to sense a magnitude of current flowing in a path between the line input and load output terminals and generate a current sense signal. The voltage sensor is configured to sense a magnitude of voltage at a point on the path between the line input and load output terminals and generate a voltage sense signal. The processor is configured to receive and process the current sense signal and the voltage sense signal to determine operational status information of the circuit breaker and determine power usage information of a load connected to the load output terminal.

FUNCTIONAL SAFETY TECHNIQUES FOR INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION DEVICES

A method may include receiving, by respective processing circuitry of one or more power modules of an industrial automation device, a control signal from a controller of the industrial automation device. The power modules may include driver circuitry and a power converter that may provide power to a motor based on the signal. The method may also include, detecting, by the respective processing circuitry, a lack of communication from the controller based on the signal, and, in response to detecting the lack of communication from the controller, transmitting, by the respective processing circuitry, a first command to gating signal enable circuitry to disable the driver circuitry, and transmitting, by the respective processing circuitry, a second command to driver power circuitry to prevent power from being provided to the driver circuitry.

ENHANCED SWITCHGEAR MONITORING AND DIAGNOSTICS IN A PROTECTION RELAY

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are disclosed for monitoring and diagnosing power system assets. An example of a power system asset may include an individual circuit breaker, a switchgear that may include multiple circuit breakers, or any other asset that may be included in a power system. A system for monitoring and diagnosing these power system assets may include one or more intelligent protection relay and switchgear monitor device(s) that may be communicatively coupled in a master-slave or peer-peer configuration in a time-synchronized manner of operation.

ARC FAULT DETECTION BY ACCUMULATION OF MACHINE LEARNING CLASSIFICATIONS IN A CIRCUIT BREAKER
20220247163 · 2022-08-04 ·

A circuit breaker with arc fault detection by accumulation of machine learning classifications is provided. The circuit breaker comprises a microcontroller including a processor, a memory and computer-readable software code which, when executed by the processor, causes the microcontroller to: sample analog signals representing one or more of the following: a RSSI signal, a voltage signal, and a current signal, perform multiple pre-processing steps on the analog signals to derive a data set, and input the data set into a machine learning classifier such that an output of the machine learning classifier is a value between 0 and 1 which represents a percent chance that the data set is from an electrical arc. Based on the value of the percent chance an accumulator value is either incremented or decremented and if the accumulator value passes an upper threshold level, the microcontroller sends a signal to trip open the circuit breaker.

Embedded electronic motor disconnect

A disconnect override circuit for a power conversion system includes a first input coupled to a user disconnect switch to receive a disconnect input signal, as well as a second input coupled to a motor drive or motor starter to receive a fault signal, and a third input adapted to receive an override signal. The disconnect override circuit has an output configured to provide a disconnect control output signal to control a user disconnect circuit according to the disconnect input signal, the fault signal and the override signal, the output signal having a first state to cause the user disconnect circuit to allow power transfer from the AC input to the motor drive or motor starter, and a second state to cause the user disconnect circuit to prevent power transfer from the AC input to the motor drive or motor starter.

METHOD AND ARCHITECTURE FOR EMBRYONIC HARDWARE FAULT PREDICTION AND SELF-HEALING

Disclosed herein is a method for making embryonic bio-inspired hardware efficient against faults through self-healing, fault prediction, and fault-prediction assisted self-healing. The disclosed self-healing recovers a faulty embryonic cell through innovative usage of healthy cells. Through experimentations, it is observed that self-healing is effective, but it takes a considerable amount of time for the hardware to recover from a fault that occurs suddenly without forewarning. To get over this problem of delay, novel deep learning-based formulations are utilized for fault predictions. The self-healing technique is then deployed along with the disclosed fault prediction methods to gauge the accuracy and delay of embryonic hardware.

FAULT DETECTION IN AN ELECTRIC POWER SYSTEM
20220252644 · 2022-08-11 ·

A fault protection system is configured to detect a fault in an electric power system. The fault protection system obtains a differential measurement signal. The differential measurement signal may, for example, indicate, as a function of time, the difference between currents or voltages measured at two or more terminals or boundaries of a fault protection zone of the electric power system. Regardless, the fault protection system generates a fault detection signal by cross-correlating the differential measurement signal with a reference signal. The reference signal may for instance be the differential measurement signal that is expected upon occurrence of a fault. The fault protection system performs fault detection, for detecting a fault internal to the fault protection zone, as a function of the fault detection signal.

MERGING UNIT VERIFICATION USING UNIQUE IDENTIFIERS

The present disclosure pertains to systems and methods to verify information received from a merging unit. In one embodiment, a system may include a merging unit interface comprising a port configured to communicate with the merging unit. The system may include a commissioning subsystem to receive a unique identifier (“UID”) associated with the merging unit using the port during a commissioning process, to store the UID associated with the merging unit, and to associate the UID with the port. In operation, a verification subsystem may receive a plurality of transmissions from the merging unit and verify that the plurality of transmissions originated from the merging unit based on matching the UID stored in the commissioning process with the UID in the plurality of transmissions, and confirming that the plurality of transmissions is received through the port associated with the UID.

Distribution Fault Location Using Graph Neural Network with both Node and Link Attributes

Systems and methods performed by a fault detection apparatus for fault detection and localization in distribution feeders having branches and nodes. The method including receive feeder raw data in a feeder of a power system. Process the feeder raw data with given operational electrical characteristics of the feeder to generate a branch attribute dataset for each branch separated by a pair of nodes for all branches. Generate a node attribute dataset for each node for all the nodes in the feeder. Input the branch and node attribute datasets into a trained neural network to determine whether a branch has a fault and a fault location within the branch, to output a classification of the fault and the fault location. Generate an alert signal based upon determining the classified fault and fault location in response to the alert signal to an outage response system.