TOWARDS A SMART GRID TO THE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF CEARÁ

This paper presents the automation of the power distribution system of the Pici Campus of the Federal University of Ceará. The paper aims to present the integration via protocol Open Platform Communications (OPC) of an... [ view full abstract ]

This paper presents the automation of the power distribution system of the Pici Campus of the Federal University of Ceará. The paper aims to present the integration via protocol Open Platform Communications (OPC) of an application program for automatic restoration and a commercial Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). OPC ensures different application programs with proprietary protocols share real-time information making them possible to interoperate. The SCADA system monitors and controls the 13.8 kV network across the campus gathering information at the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database – Express version. The automatic restoration system is an application software developed in C# using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The self-healing application program contributes to increase the reliability of the power distribution system of the university campus. Tests in laboratory were performed successfully in order to evaluate the communication performance.