Hefei: Building a ubiquitous power Internet of Things to create a beautiful lake city

As the sub-center of the Yangtze River Delta city cluster, Hefei, Anhui, has firmly grasped the pulse of high-quality innovative development in recent years and focused on building a national comprehensive science center, manufacturing base, and industrial innovation center. In response to this, Hefei Power Supply Company, in accordance with the two main lines of "building a smart IoT system" and "expanding comprehensive energy services", has simultaneously made efforts in six major professional directions such as smart operation and inspection, operation and dispatching, and accelerated the construction of Binhu Smart Energy Comprehensive Service Demonstration Zone... The power grid is safer and more reliable, the service is better and faster, and the city is more ecological and intelligent. A modern ubiquitous power Internet of Things is providing guarantees for the leapfrog development of Hefei City.

Smart interconnected power grid is safe and reliable

In May this year, the State Grid Anhui Electric Power Company identified Hefei Binhu New Area as one of the two demonstration areas of the province's ubiquitous power Internet of Things. Subsequently, Hefei Power Supply Company accelerated the construction of the project and completed the first distribution network protection project application based on 5G communication technology in China in July this year. It took the lead in building two power wireless private network base stations and initially built a lightweight smart energy service and power grid digital business integration platform. "This is only the starting point of the Binhu Smart Energy Service Demonstration Area. We are upgrading all aspects of the power grid to create a more modern smart linkage platform and provide high-quality services to the majority of power customers." The relevant person in charge of the Internet Office of Hefei Power Supply Company introduced.

In the 220 kV smart substation in Binhu New District, oil chromatography monitoring, infrared temperature measurement and other online monitoring methods are combined with image recognition technology to achieve real-time collection of equipment status, electrical and environmental quantities; high-definition video and robot joint automatic inspections achieve 100% intelligent replacement and full coverage of traditional manual routine inspections. Holographic sensing equipment such as HPLC (high-speed broadband carrier) smart meters, smart distribution transformer terminals, and low-voltage branch fault indicators are installed on the customer side and grid side of the distribution network of the city's "capillaries".

At the same time, Hefei Power Supply Company further broke through data barriers, combined with data integration of all links such as equipment ledgers and operation data, established an effective distribution automation system, and realized automatic operation and maintenance of the power grid, active alarm and analysis and disposal processes. In addition, in terms of management mechanism, Hefei Power Supply Company established the first regional power supply service center in Anhui Province - Binhu Science City Power Supply Service Center, thus initially forming a grid-based comprehensive service system of "power supply service command center + power supply service department + comprehensive service class". Once a fault occurs in the area, the system will quickly identify the fault and accurately locate it, and send the order to the nearest staff.

"The number of power outages has decreased, and the repair time is faster!" Ms. Liu, a resident of Binhu Landing Guanhuyuan Community in Hefei, has a direct feeling that the quality of power services has been steadily improving. At present, the average time to reach the repair site in Binhu District, Hefei has been reduced from 32 minutes to 15 minutes, the average annual power outage time for users has been reduced from 96 minutes to 51 minutes, the number of repair work orders has decreased by more than 30% year-on-year, and the power supply reliability in the Binhu pilot area has been increased from 99.98% to 99.99%.

Integrated energy optimizes the business environment

Recently, the staff of Hefei Power Supply Company carried out autumn centralized maintenance of power equipment in the power distribution room of Yuansu Market in Binhu New District. This power distribution station is the first batch of customer-managed power equipment in Hefei that has been handed over to the power supply department for maintenance, and more professional and intelligent high-quality services can be obtained 24 hours a day.

It is understood that Hefei Power Supply Company and government departments have jointly established the "Hefei Power Big Data Center" to fully tap into massive power big data information, create a comprehensive energy intelligent operation and monitoring platform for users, and grasp the status and trend of user energy consumption indicators in real time. Ordinary residential customers can learn about household electricity consumption analysis, energy-saving diagnosis reports, rationalization suggestions, etc. through the WeChat public account.

At the same time, large power customers who hand over maintenance to the power supply department will receive comprehensive energy efficiency analysis of water, electricity, gas, heat, cold and other comprehensive energy data, as well as more economical and professional solutions to comprehensively reduce energy costs and improve work efficiency. Through online monitoring, Hefei Power Supply Company can grasp the status of customers' self-managed power distribution room equipment in real time, discover abnormal faults at the first time, and cooperate in troubleshooting. The relevant person in charge of Hefei Factor Market said: "After handing over the power equipment to the power supply department for operation and maintenance, there is no more pressure and worries about operation and maintenance. We will put more energy into production."

So far, Hefei Power Supply Company has signed transportation and maintenance contracts with 52 key users, including Hefei Factor Market, University of Science and Technology of China, and JAC Group. Taking Hefei Financial Port Economic Park as an example, after being handed over to the power supply department for maintenance, the energy utilization efficiency in the park increased by 8%, saving an average of 933,300 yuan per year.

Beautiful "pan-network" makes cities smarter

At present, the communication demand of various IoT applications is growing rapidly. If enterprises and institutions choose to build their own wireless networks, it will inevitably lead to the problem of repeated construction of frequencies and base stations and waste of resources. To this end, Hefei Power Supply Company and Hefei Binhu Science City Management Committee cooperate with the government and enterprises, based on the principle of "joint network construction and shared network use", and plan to build a 1.8 MHz broadband technology public utility wireless network covering 23 square kilometers in 2019.

As early as next year, the company will adopt a wireless point-to-point data collection mode to effectively improve its response capabilities for services such as distribution network monitoring, proactive repairs, and precise troubleshooting; and accurately realize flexible and reliable access to services such as power load control, distribution automation, and electricity consumption information collection.

"For the power supply reliability and service quality in Hefei Binhu area, both will be further improved," said the person in charge of information and communication of Hefei Power Supply Company. Not only the power service level has been significantly improved, but the wireless network of government-enterprise cooperation adopts the mode of "shared network construction and shared network use", which will meet the requirements of the rapid construction of 5G network in Hefei city, and at the same time serve the city's public utilities, smart parks, and municipal information collection, and help the construction of smart cities.

In addition, Hefei Power Supply Company also piloted the construction of Anhui's first orderly smart electric vehicle charging station in Mingzhu Community, Binhu New District, to achieve orderly interconnection between charging piles, power grids, and smart vehicle networks. Customers can use 5G technology to obtain site parameters in real time, realize orderly charging and private charging pile sharing and other technological functions, further reduce charging costs, and solve a series of problems such as charging difficulties.