ABSTRACT
Monitoring and diagnostics in smart grids rely on the following fundamental components: instruments to continuously measure and collect data from field assets; communications to bring field data into a central location; a database to store the data; and software to analyze the data and create reports for dispatching appropriate actions. Sensors may be stand-alone devices or integrated into multifunctional IEDs and can be deployed in main tiers of architecture depending on the application and data requirements, and flexibility to future needs. Sensing and analysis can be performed local to the asset being monitored, which has been lately termed "edge analytics." A common architecture involves sensing and measurements that are monitored and collected by a central processor in a hierarchical architecture, such as a substation computer/gateway, for analysis and interpretation. Diagnostics is the analysis and interpretation of asset monitoring data to determine the cause of any changes, variations, or anomalies, and subsequent identification of possible failure modes in progress.
