Project Category: Electrical
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About our project
The objective of this project was to design a Power Quality (PQ) sensing device that helps FortisAlberta with mitigating PQ issues affecting AMR (Automatic Meter Reading) via PLC (Power Line Carrier) signals.
This device is intended to be used at customer utility sites (120 V and 60 HZ). It monitors and stores voltage inter-harmonic frequencies in hourly log files. The stored data is processed and remotely transmitted to a website accessible by representatives of FortisAlberta.
The transmitted information contains the frequency spectrum, which is obtained by taking the Fast Fourier Transform of the time domain signal from the 120V outlet. This spectrum is analyzed via a graphical user interface (GUI). Through the use of the GUI, FortisAlberta’s staff will be able to analyze and take actions that result in the mitigation of PQ issues affecting Automatic Meter Reading.
This device has huge potential to be implemented by electric utility companies to ensure accuracy in power line communication.
Meet our team members
A 4th year electrical engineering student at the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering. Focusing on the power side of his degree, Ian’s strengths and interests are mostly related to the power system. This includes analyzing energy systems, power system protection, and electromagnetic waves and applications. Due Covid19, Ian is looking to extend his 4th year to accommodate an internship to be able to apply the theories he learned, from previous courses, into real world application and gain valuable experience before graduating.
A final year electrical and computer engineering student at the Schulich School of Engineering (SSE) in the University of Calgary (UofC) and a graduate of the Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) diploma at the McPhail School of Energy (MSE) in the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). Dunsin served as the Vice President for the student body of the EET program at SAIT and currently serves as the President of an independent machine learning research student group at the UofC. His strengths and interests are in power system analysis and operation, digital systems design, and python programming. His professional career kick started at FortisAlberta, an electrical utility, where he spent 4 summers (a total of 16 months) working as a field support staff (dispatch student) and an engineering student.
A 4th year electrical and computer engineering student at the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering. His strengths and interests have developed over the course of the degree, especially through the 3rd year electrical engineering design course – ENEL 400. These include power systems analysis, protection, hardware testing and enclosure design. His objective from this project is to apply his theoretical knowledge in a practical setting while adding to his skillset and use it as an opportunity to start a career in the power industry.
A 4th year electrical and computer engineering student at the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering; with a minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation with Haskayne School of Business. Mitchell previously graduated from SAIT for Electronic Engineering Technologist then decided to continue into electrical engineering. He has strengths in circuit design, PCB design, testing, troubleshooting, circuit manufacturing, filter design, wireless design, microprocessors, analog and digital hardware design. Mitchell has previously worked for a consulting firm for Wireless communications, Power systems, and instrumentation design. Focusing on electronic design for consumer and power applications. Mitchell is currently interested in product development with electronics for consumer, industrial and manufacturing purposes. Strong interest in the business dynamics and innovation of these industries. For more information please visit https://mitchellduce.com.
A final year Electrical Engineering student with a minor in Computer Engineering at the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary. Priyanvada has previously graduated from Electrical Engineering Technologist Diploma from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). Her interests lie towards concepts in computer engineering such as digital circuits, digital electronics, and computer networking. She also enjoys programming in C, C++, and Java. She is currently adding to her skillset through self-learning other programming languages such as python and taking courses in wireless communication systems.
A highly motivated Electrical Engineering student inspired by project-based learning with experience in Low Voltage Power Distribution & Control Systems as well as Project Management. Ali has previously held a summer internship position as an engineering student at Eaton Corporation where he gained valuable experience in the power management sector working with motor control centres (MCCs). While working at Eaton, he also collaborated with a team of engineers to create CAD drawings from SLD which provided him with essential operational knowledge of low voltage electrical power systems. He enjoys working with power system protection and electrical systems in commercial buildings and hopes to start his professional engineering career in this field of work. He is also finishing up his undergraduate degree in Petroleum Geology from University of Calgary at the end of next year which he believes can compliment his electrical engineering studies to make his portfolio more versatile.
Details about our design
HOW OUR DESIGN ADDRESSES PRACTICAL ISSUES
- Our design:
- Checks the interharmonics of the power signal from the outlet
- Can show how non linear loads are affecting the electrical power line communication
- Can be implemented by electric utility companies to ensure no interference is present in the power line signals used for communication in power line distribution
WHAT MAKES OUR DESIGN INNOVATIVE
- Our design:
- Has the ability to obtain the interharmonics of the power signal remotely from any 120V, North American power outlet
- Can transmit frequency spectrum data to a user friendly website
- Allows the user to plot the graph of the data points for graphical interpretation
WHAT MAKES OUR DESIGN SOLUTION EFFECTIVE
- This will save travelling costs and time for site visits, by allowing users to remotely access data
- You can remotely solve problems related to power quality and power line communications
- We can analyze the spectrum and pinpoint the anomalies in electric power harmonics and take mitigating actions remotely
HOW WE VALIDATED OUR DESIGN SOLUTION
- To validate this prototype, the team referred to the 6 requirements below that were outlined at the beginning of this project. We carried out tests on the device to ensure that each of these requirements were met.
- 1. The first requirement was that each component received power from the power supply and was able to turn on. We tested this by running the device for up to 48 hours and observing the functionality. It was found that the system remained stable throughout the test and was operating as expected.
- 2. The second requirement was that frequencies outside the 300Hz to 12kHz range were filtered out. We tested this by visually inspecting the FFT waveform on the website. The result confirmed that the filtering system was in fact removing the unwanted frequencies from the spectrum.
- 3. The ADC needed to be interfaced with the microcontroller, which took the digital values and computed an FFT on the analog equivalent. For the device to work, the ADC had to be fully operational, and we confirmed this with a spot check for a continuous stream of data appearing on the Pi Interface. (The ADC took 32,768 sps).
- 4. Next, the signal processor of this device had to accurately convert the data from the time domain to the frequency domain. To validate this, we generated synthetic data on MATLAB, and computed an FFT from within the software. Then, we used our custom FFT algorithm on the same data and compared the spectrums. We found that both frequency spectrums were identical, meaning our FFT algorithm was accurate.
- 5. The storage for this device needed to be large enough to store a weeks’ worth of data. To calculate the size of this data, we took the size of 1 second’s worth of data 175kb, and extrapolated that to one week, this came up to around 109GB. And that was within 128GB of storage in our flash drive.
- 6. The enclosure had to contain all the components and their wiring. To check this, we had to see if everything could fit inside once assembled. The picture on the right shows that the enclosure was indeed large enough for the components and wires, with extra room for air flow.
FEASIBILITY OF OUR DESIGN SOLUTION
- Our device accurately transforms the time domain signal into frequency domain data, which can be used to analyse the spectrum
- Our sponsor showed a great interest in using this for their field studies, however due to COVID we weren’t able to test the feasibility of this design
Partners and mentors
We would like to thank our industry sponsor FortisAlberta for engaging us in such an interesting and challenging project.
We would also like to thank our academic advisor, Dr. Geoffrey Messier, who helped us understand important concepts regarding communications and information systems and how we could use it to solve our problem.
Lastly, we would like to thank our Teaching Assistant, Udoka Nwaneto. His time and effort towards ensuring we were meeting our goals is also highly appreciated.
Our photo gallery
