1. REMOTE POWER MONITORING OF MARINE SITES
MICHAEL WAFULA
KENYA POWER
5TH UNESCO AFRICA ENGINEERING WEEK / 3RD AFRICA ENGINEERING CONFERENCE & 25TH IEK INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

2. ABSTRACT
Power monitoring is essential to ensure continued operation of electrical equipment in a given setting.
Many remote sites are prone to unattended power outages and hence are adversely affected by non-operation leading to economic losses in the marine sector.
The ability of real time power monitoring using technology enable information relayed to relevant personnel in the event of power failure

3. INTRODUCTION
The use of technology in power monitoring and control has been evident in the past through SCADA systems which have provided proper solutions in High voltage networks in Transmission and distribution lines.
Distribution automation (DA) of low voltage power network focuses on optimizing its performance by reducing customer complaints, outage lengths and response by the technical teams.

4. CONT’D
The outages have an eventual diverse effect on the customer either directly or indirectly such as stopped business operations.
The marine economy has various components such hotels, tourist sites, power houses, streetlights among others that utilize power and require to be monitored on real time basis.
The remote power monitoring capability of sites is usually a big challenge due to the costly solutions with both control and monitoring services that need to be installed.
The paper suggest a cheaper solution that only focuses on monitoring of sites that are powered through GSM and in turn give reports on dashboard and relay information to maintenance team for appropriate actions.

5. THEORETICAL CONCEPTS Remote Terminal Unit (RTU)
Is a microprocessor controlled electronic device that interfaces objects in the physical world to a distributed control system or SCADA system by transmitting telemetry data to a master system to control connected electronic objects
RTU Challenges
An RTU is relatively expensive
An RTU usage is applicable in cases where multiple signals need to be wired and control commands have to be executed remotely.

6. GSM MODULE
GSM stands for global system for mobile communication (GSM) which was developed at Bell Laboratories in 1970 and is widely used mobile communication system in the world. It Consist of:-
A Mobile Station.
Base Station Subsystem.
Network Subsystem.

7. CLOUD COMPUTING
This is a new computing convention that focuses on resource pooling to accomplish a given service request based on demand.
The advantages of adapting this form of computing include reduced costs, return on investment for projects that require critical IT infrastructure, scalable based on demand, increased agility and innovation due to increased focus on business development.

8. THE SUGGESTED SOLUTION
Due to the stated RTU challenges, a solution that is cost effective and focuses on monitoring only the ON/OFF status of a given power line; will suffice through use of a powered GSM module and a custom software developed to interface the signals received. Embracing cloud as a means of hosting the software and the storage for the monitoring software greatly reduces the infrastructure cost.
The cloud adopted can either be public or private depending on available infrastructure and security

9. DESIGN
The suggested solution design focuses on tapping the power status using custom developed software from a powered GSM module and transmitting the same information to a remote system via GPRS connectivity.
The developed system comprises of a secure cloud computer installed with software for interfacing with the GSM module to capture the field signals of the various programmed modules.
The modules are attached to specific components of interest such as marine sites buildings or power lines and are configured to relay the information to the cloud via APIs.

10. ARCHITECTURE

11. GUI PRESENTATION

12. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS
The programmed GSM modules through there voltage status were able to transmit information to the monitoring software for presentation on the Graphical User Interface. The Red color implied the line had been programmed but was off while the blue implied the line had not been programmed. The Logs of each ON and Off status were recorded for the GSM module that was in operation.

13. OUTPUT FROM THE SYSTEM

14. CONCLUSION
The solutions suggested has a costing implication of a fixed GSM device module of around $51 with recurrent operation costs of around $5 per month
With the focus on monitoring and reporting, the use of a GSM module represents a simple solution that can help organizations in Marine sector such as hotels, tourist attractions, and remote power stations to be able to monitor their power status and in turn focus on reporting to the personnel in charge for quick restoration.
Continuous operations of power related activities without disruptions is what every business dreams about and delays to power restoration are mainly caused by the concerned maintenance personnel not being informed on time.

15. THE END
Thank You