ERIGrid 2.0 offers a chance for researchers involved in power systems and smart grids to access top European laboratories for their experimental research.
Sajjad Asefi was one of the people whose project got selected and he had the opportunity to visit the Ormazabal company (UDEX lab) in Spain, as part of Lab Access programme of the ERIGrid 2.0 Project, supported by H2020.
The project focused on the condition monitoring of instrument transformers using partial discharge (PD) measurements. To achieve a real-world realization of power system substation and instrument transformer PD measurement data, Sajjad applied for lab access through the ERIGrid 2.0 program. This access was granted to the UDEX (Demonstration and Experimentation Unit) laboratory, where he was able to conduct comprehensive experiments demonstrating the feasibility of utilizing PD data from healthy and defected instrument transformers for online condition monitoring. The project concluded with preliminary implementation and demonstration of AI-based methods for PD detection, showcasing the potential of advanced techniques in predictive maintenance of instrument transformers.
“The ERIGrid 2.0 Lab Access provided invaluable resources and a real-world environment for conducting the experiments. Moreover, interacting with lab engineers and utilizing their expertise made the project planning and implementing experiments straightforward. Using the real-world scenarios to validate our methods for online condition monitoring of instrument transformers, indicated the applicability of this project in practical cases.” – Sajjad Asefi
After the completion of the Lab Access, the preliminary results and methodologies for application of AI-based PD detection techniques were validated.
The results were presented at the 2024 International Conference on Diagnostics in Electrical Engineering, Czech Republic (3-5 September 2024). The next steps involve further refining the AI based method and scaling up the implementation for broader application across different types of instrument transformers having various defects. Additionallty, the outcome of this work can serve as a benchmark case study for future research works of the academic community.
Sajjad concludes that he would like to: “to express my gratitude to the ERIGrid 2.0 coordinators for providing the lab access opportunity. And special thanks to UDEX lab experts, Nabil Akroud, Aritz Hurtado, Ian Gilbert, and Inaki Orue, who hosted me at UDEX and helped me a lot throughout the project.”
