Improving smart SCADA data analysis with alternative data sources

As the implementation of the Smart Grids increases so does the quantity and variety of SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) events. The experience of handling this large amount of data has given a new role to the DSO as a Data Manager. With this in mind, EDP Distribuição (EDPD) started developing big data handling algorithms that transform this huge amount of data in information and act as a filter to deliver useful high quality information to the dispatch engineers and maintenance teams. Yet as the potential to enhance the information coming from SCADA is huge EDPD is also starting to introduce data from sources other than SCADA in the smart event analysis programs. Information from maintenance teams, OMS (Outage Management System), voltage quality monitoring equipment, weather stations and wild fire stricken areas are cross references with the output of smart event analysis algorithms to provide some extra information about protection relays and circuit breakers performance and to help identity the fault probable cause. Smart SCADA data analysis tools as the one presented in this paper benefits grid operation as it simplifies dispatching centres activity. They also come in handy to identify problems such as circuit breakers failures or protection relays malfunctions in a much easier and automatic way, thus, helping to assess the reliability of the protection system with direct impact on grid operation. Furthermore, the algorithms provide information that can be used to identify geographical trends and to estimate the root causes of faults.