Offering an advanced IoT solution for management of trailing cables and HV protection relays at an open cut coal mine in the Bowen Basin.
Background:
We were contracted by a tier one open cut coal mining company in the Bowen Basin to devise an IoT driven solution to improve operational management of trailing cables and HV protection relays.
The project parameters were as follows:
- The customer has one HV substation that powers two mining shovels with two separate HV outlets. Each outlet has a trailing cable that connects the substation outlets to the machines. A trailing cable bridges the distance between outlet and machine by joining multiple cables in series.
- The earth return impedance is calculated by subtracting the manually measured cable pilot resistance from the total HPB measured Pilot-Earth loop resistance. Electrical staff need to periodically test individual cable lengths with a digital multimeter to determine the pilot resistance. These values are recorded in a database manually. A HPB relay monitors the Pilot-Earth loop resistance for each outlet on the HV substation.
- In Ampcontrol substations, this HPB relay data is made available to the on board control system. Previously, the substations had no external communications, so the Pilot-Earth loop resistance measured by the HPB relay also needs to be manually read and added to the database.
Solution:
We were able to combine cable data from our asset database with live pilot resistance data readings from the HV protection relays to enable us to accurately and instantly calculate touch potentials to assist in reduced nuisance tripping, potentially extend cable lengths whilst providing confidence that compliance and safety are not compromised.
The solution was implemented using an AWARE IoT gateway with 4G connectivity, collecting data in real-time and sending the data into a cloud database record system.
This was combined with the cable data, applying analytics and enabling visualisation and monitoring via the AWARE cloud portal.
We were able to offer the full range of services for the solution, from design and installation of the equipment on site, supply and configuration of our own IoT gateways, through to development and customisation of the software visualisation tools, tested and completed in cooperation with the customer.
Additionally, SMS notifications were set up to notify of any warnings and alarms, as defined within the system design.
Outcome:
The customer is now able to make informed decisions on cable selection, trip settings and extend asset distances from its power source with added confidence in meeting compliance and safety standards. This enhances availability and reduces potential downtime of the assets.
The Cloud solution has been developed with full scalability as priority. Future ‘Apps’ could include equipment data from an unlimited number of assets and can be applied to any type of industrial equipment. Our hardware platform is designed to be able to collect data from many different sources and protocols, not just Ampcontrol AWARE IoT devices.
Test sheets, schematics and other relevant data can also be linked and presented so that it can be referred to at the data point in our portal.
