RFID Enabled Framework for Substation Maintenance Management

Objectives: Effective substation maintenance management based on low cost and reliable Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enabled implementation framework. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Economical operation of substation by minimizing the equipment maintenance cost is the prime concern for all the power distribution utilities. Number of maintenance management strategies has been developed for optimizing the substation equipment maintenance cost. Effectiveness of these optimized maintenance strategies lies on the actual implementation in the field. Currently equipment maintenance activities are carried out with off-line association with equipment. Also, equipment maintenance data is acquired and populated manually into host computer which is running maintenance cost optimization applications. Inherently manual process suffers from various drawbacks and results in poor maintenance management. RFID based technology along with embedded system is identified for making the above off-line process into an on-line process with data integrity. Findings: Present paper proposes a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enabled implementation framework to perform the maintenance with on-line association with equipment. This allows on-line access with the equipment and eliminates the manual process of acquiring data from equipment at the substation level. Also, ensures the on-line update of pre-maintenance and postmaintenance information of equipment in the Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS). Conventional RFID readers which are based on multi-purpose hand-held computers are driven by high level operating systems and programming languages. Due to high level system software on handheld readers, the network latency increases and data refresh rate decreases. This paper proposes a low cost microcontroller based RFID reader with up-stream data interface using low level network programming to address the above issues. Host computer data interface is implemented using a TCP/IP protocol which assures the data integrity. The low level programming at the host computer for network communication minimizes the network latency in the data transfer and improves the data refresh rate. Maintenance process with RFID framework is designed and explained. Application/Improvements: Maintenance management strategies can be implemented effectively using the proposed RFID enabled framework with customized RLU along with low level network interface to CMMS. Present implementation based on Ethernet interface over TCP/IP can be extended seamlessly for wireless (Wi-Fi) as well.