Applying Edge Computing to Distribution Automation

Digital computing hardware and software technologies have seen a massive improvement in recent years. More specifically, lower cost for computation and storage, compact size, compatibility with a large selection of operating systems and communication protocols have increased the penetration of single board computers in many consumer and industrial applications. This paper presents the application of state-of-the-art edge computing infrastructure to the electrical power distribution grid. Electrical power distribution is becoming increasingly complex with the large integration of distributed renewable resources. The distribution grid also experiences many different undesired events, such as different types of temporary and permanent faults, loss of measurement data, cybersecurity, etc. This paper shows the small-scale experimental validation of edge computing in power distribution automation that can be used for classifying different faults, detect anomalies in the grid, measurement data recovery, advanced analytics, etc.