Designing Virtual Reality Environments through an Authoring System Based on CAD Floor Plans: A Methodology and Case Study Applied to Electric Power Substations for Supervision

The adoption of Virtual Reality (RV) technologies in prototype design and process revision has contributed to multiple industry areas. Nonetheless, the development of VR systems for engineering is a complex task, as it involves specialized teams handling low-level code development. Given these problems, the goal of this study is presenting a methodology for designing VR, through an Authoring System based on Computer-Aided Design (CAD). The presented methodology provides an easy integration of electric power substation floor plans and Virtual Reality software (VRS), as well as three-dimensional and symbol modeling conventions. Centralized software architecture was developed, composed of the CAD Editor, input manager and VRS. The methodology was evaluated through a case study applied to the conception (elaboration) of electric power substations (EPS) as part of a Research and Development (R&D) project for training and field assets supervision. The results demonstrated visual precision and high integrity in elaboration of a VR environment from the CAD floor plan. This work also presents a comparative analysis between manual conception and the Authoring System.

Innovative earthing systems for electric power substations using conductive nanoparticles

The earthing system is very important to safe human’s lives and protect power system from normal and abnormal faults. High soil resistivity regions is the main problem of installation the earthing systems in electric power substations to pass the current through the earth's surface. This paper has been overcome on high soil resistivity regions by penetrating conductive nanoparticles to have extremely low grounding resistance. Moreover, it has been succeeded to examine the methodology of the proposed Nano-Tech earthing systems in case of single rods, multiple rods and grids. Also, it has been defined optimal types and concentrations of nanoparticles for Nano-Tech grounding system to provide excellence protection for electrical substations with respect to built beneath of soil where substation is located. A comparative study has been discussed and analyzed the results of traditional and nanotechnology grounding systems.

An architecture for power substations communication networks based on SDN and virtualization paradigms

The deployment of infrastructures related to the Smart Grid concept introduces data communication networks in the grid operation systems (control, communication, and monitoring). The implementation of data communication networks facilitates and improves the efficiency of the tasks related to the generation, transmission, and distribution of electrical energy. In turn, network management is being permeated by new technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and network virtualization, that promote automation and innovation of communication networks aiming to overcome the lack of flexibility and the difficulties to evolve that are present in current communication networks. In this context, this paper proposes a reconceptualization of the power substations communications network architecture based on the IEC 61850 standard. Here, we present a complete view of the Smart Solution for Substation Networks (S3N) architecture, which allows modeling the future power substations communication networks taking advantage of the benefits introduced by SDN and virtualization technologies. In addition, in order to provide a better understanding of the challenges arising in this area, and to generate new research interest in this field, a review of several studies oriented to determine the feasibility of incorporating SDN as a key element to improve the management and operation of the power substations communication networks is presented.