Application—Advantages of Infrared Thermal Imaging Inspection Robot in Substation

Advantages of Infrared Thermal Imaging Inspection Robot in Substation

   My country has a vast territory, large-scale power grid and numerous management nodes. The substation is one of the key management nodes of the power grid. It has the characteristics of high technical content, large number of equipment, high risk factor and geographical dispersion. Once the substation fails, it will directly cause a regional power outage. Therefore, the inspection work of the substation has always been highly concerned. However, for a long time, our country has adopted a manual inspection mode in the inspection of substations. Although this kind of inspection method that depends on people can make full use of human subjective judgment ability, it also has obvious shortcomings. For example, excessive physical exertion, difficulty in ensuring personal safety during inspections, difficulty in accurately determining the operating status of equipment, inability to inspect at night, significant human errors, and so on. This series of problems makes the field of substation management put forward a strong demand for intelligent inspection.

Figure 1. Substation infrared thermal imaging inspection robot.

   Intelligent inspection technology is an emerging technology that uses intelligent equipment to replace people for substation inspection. It is an important symbol of intelligent and informatized substation management. In current practice, the so-called intelligent inspection technology is actually represented by the application of infrared thermal imaging inspection robots. The application of infrared thermal imaging inspection robot has solved the safety and efficiency problems in manual inspection. At the same time, it has incomparable advantages over manual inspection in the detection of various parameters. The robot can complete large-scale inspections in a short time. The scope, multi-parameter, and highly reliable inspection tasks greatly increase the level of intelligent substation operation.

   As an intelligent electronic system, the infrared thermal imaging inspection robot can integrate functional modules according to the designer's wishes and actual needs, which has great flexibility. However, judging from current applications in the coming year, the most commonly used functions of infrared thermal imaging inspection robots in substations mainly include path planning, fault detection, positioning and navigation, remote control, and so on. After the system issues a task command to the on-site inspection robot, the robot needs to automatically plan the optimal path through the internal algorithm module. Generally, it needs to go through the steps of path search, path screening and path simulation experiments, and after manual correction. The actual inspection path can be determined. The fault detection mainly relies on the temperature detection function of the infrared thermal imaging system. The robot analyzes the temperature distribution of each device in real time through infrared thermal imaging temperature measurement, takes pictures of the overheated places, and collects the fault sound from the device, and then according to the forecast Set the conditions for fault analysis and location. Positioning navigation is a necessary prerequisite for the robot to follow the planned path. The substation generally adopts trackless navigation. Therefore, a GIS map is actually imported into the robot. It can also bring its own GPS positioning terminal to enable it to autonomously complete positioning, forwarding, turning, and avoiding Barriers and other functions.