• Login
    View Item 
    •   UNZA Repository Home
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • Engineering
    • View Item
    •   UNZA Repository Home
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • Engineering
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Cloud based power failure sensing and management model for the electricity grid in developing countries – a case of Zambia

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Main Document.pdf (4.629Mb)
    Date
    2020
    Author
    Sinkala, Janet Nanyangwe
    Type
    Thesis
    Language
    en
    Metadata
    Show full item record

    Abstract
    In Zambia part of the electric grid is not monitored, this means that there are no sensors in the electric grid to enable grid status information to be sent to the power utility. Without these sensors the power utility finds it difficult to determine when there is a power failure in the distribution electric grid, especially if the power failure occurs in the Low Voltage level. Usually power failure management relies on humans. The customer with a telephone is the one whose call initiates the dispatch of a field crew to attend to power failures. However, this system of addressing power outages is not very effective and usually results in long durations of system interruptions which have a negative impact on the social economic activities of the country. This study proposes a cloud based power failure sensing system to enable automatic power failure sensing and reporting as well as monitoring of the low voltage power network. A baseline study was conducted to determine the challenges faced by both ZESCO (Service provider) and the electricity clients in the current power failure reporting management model. The results from the baseline study indicate that challenges are being faced by electricity clients when it comes to reporting power failures. These include failure to get through to the customer call centre due to busy lines, unanswered calls, failed calls and network failure. Challenges faced by the electricity service provider are the inability to attend to all the customers through the call centre as customer calls are rejected due to limited Call Centre system resources, difficulties in determining the power failure location and poor response to power failures reported. To address these challenges the proposed cloud based power failure sensor prototype made use of a Voltage sensor circuit, Arduino Microcontroller board, SIM7600E 4G/GPRS/GSM/GPS module, cloud architecture, Web Application and Google Map API. This research proves that automating the distribution network is necessary as the results from the proposed model show reduction in dependency on customer trouble calls, improved power failure reporting time, automatic update of power failure location information, power utility visibility of the grid and quick response to power failures resulting in reduced outage durations. The results of this research were successfully published in the International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications (IJACSA) Journal Volume 11 Issue 2 February 2020. Key words – Cloud Technology, power failure sensing, low voltage network, electric grid, cloud architecture.
    URI
    http://dspace.unza.zm/handle/123456789/6511
    Publisher
    The University of Zambia
    Subject
    Cloud Technology--Zambia
    Low voltage network--Zambia
    Cloud architecture--Zambia
    Description
    Thesis
    Collections
    • Engineering [143]

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2016  DuraSpace
    UNZA homepage | UNZA Library | Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Theme by 
    Atmire NV
     

     

    Browse

    All of UNZA RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2016  DuraSpace
    UNZA homepage | UNZA Library | Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Theme by 
    Atmire NV