Dynamic Busbar Coloring Overview

The aim of this Add-on is to calculate the distribution of voltages across an electrical grid that may not be fully equipped with voltage sensors. It allows visualizing the presence or absence of voltage on all busbar and feeders, a feature also known as Dynamic Busbar Coloring.

This set of functions is referred to as the Topology Engine (or just engine) in this help. The main functional component of the Topology Engine is a program, svmgrTopology.dll, developed using the SV Manager toolkit.

Dynamic Busbar Coloring gives the operator a quick overview of the state of a substation or other distribution network and shows, at a glance, whether any specific part of the substation (e.g. busbar segment) is earthed, energized, or de-energized. This function helps operators to be informed about the current state so that they can make proper decisions, especially in emergency situations.

During initialization, the engine reads the configuration file that defines the structure of the electrical network, and builds, in memory, the list of variables required for the calculation of voltage distribution.

When any of these variables’ values change, the engine recalculates the distribution of voltages, and updates the result in PcVue variables used for logging, alarming and visualization.