Context: PAE, a leading player in the electrical power distribution industry, has always been at the forefront of innovation. Their mission to optimize electrical distribution maintenance has led them to create a groundbreaking solution that capitalizes on the capabilities of AWS.
Challenge: PAE’s core challenge centered around improving the efficiency of their maintenance crews by precisely pinpointing the location of faults along their medium voltage lines. Traditionally, this required multiple crews to traverse the entire network, a time-consuming and resource-intensive process.
Solution: PAE’s solution to this complex challenge involved integrating AWS into their existing infrastructure, enabling them to streamline fault detection and maintenance procedures. Their system, which relies on telemetry data from sensors placed along electrical power distribution lines, provides real-time insights into the condition of their network. The primary objective was to visualize this data on dashboards and accurately identify the sections of the line presenting faults.
To achieve this, PAE harnessed the data processing capabilities of AWS. The process begins with the collection of data from electromagnetic sensors distributed along the power distribution lines. PAE’s Data Scientist, in collaboration with AWS, has established a secure and efficient connection between these sensors and PAE’s data center. The data received from these sensors is meticulously processed, and only the most critical information, stored in .JSON format, is extracted for further analysis.
To facilitate the analysis of this essential data, PAE’s Data Scientist developed a custom application, which is hosted on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance. This application serves as the nerve center for processing, storing, and retrieving data. It utilizes the robust InfluxDB stack tailored for IoT data analysis, further enhancing the efficiency and speed of fault detection. With this infrastructure, PAE can identify the exact location of faults along their medium voltage lines swiftly and accurately, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual inspections by maintenance crews.
Moreover, data security and loss prevention are paramount concerns in the power distribution industry. PAE employs AWS’s data backup services, including automated EC2 snapshots, to safeguard their data and maintain business continuity in the face of unforeseen disruptions. This robust backup strategy ensures that PAE’s crucial fault detection data remains accessible, even in the event of technical issues or data loss, providing peace of mind and reliability to their operations.
In summary, PAE’s strategic integration of AWS into their fault detection system underscores the pivotal role of cloud-based services in modernizing the electrical distribution industry. By leveraging AWS’s infrastructure, data processing capabilities, and backup solutions, PAE has transformed their maintenance procedures. The optimization of maintenance crews and the rapid identification of faults along medium voltage lines not only enhance operational efficiency but also represent a significant step toward the reliability and sustainability of power distribution networks. This collaborative effort between PAE and AWS is poised to revolutionize how the industry approaches fault detection and maintenance.
