USE OF GIS TO DEPICT POWER INTERRUPTIONS Case Study: Nairobi County BY: Akoth Ruzuna F19/3911/2008 Supervisor: Mr. D. N. Siriba.
Background Information Information on scheduled power interruptions is announced through the print media. Kenya Power and Lighting Company in recent times has began to upload this information on its website (in document form). KPLC is solely responsible for transmission and distribution of electricity in Kenya. Constitution of Kenya allows the company, from time to time to temporarily cut of power supply to an area for maintenance or upgrade purposes. GIS has been and is still being used to address challenges faced in daily human life. Web services make information distribution easier and faster.
PROBLEM STATEMENT Every year the KPLC invests a lot of its resources maintaining and improving electricity network and its customer service modalities. In the same spirit, GIS can be used to aid the same if used to alert people on scheduled power interruptions. Print media does not give the extent of prevailing outages because it only gives place names. Kenya has a 37% internet growth rate which implies that consumers will quickly adopt to obtaining this information online. This can improve customer service efficiency and help in ensuring smooth transmission and distribution within the network.
Objectives OBJECTIVES Main Objective To come up with a web based map of Nairobi that shows areas experiencing power interruptions at a particular time. Other objectives Link between the transmission and distribution networks To provide an alternative means of informing people about scheduled power disruptions.
Methodology Study Area The study area of this project is the Nairobi County. It is the Capital City of Kenya and the largest in the country and lies within latitudes 1 10' S and 1 25' S and longitudes 36 40 E and 37 10E Has a power grid that consists of a series of transmission and distribution lines and stations.
Data Identification and Collection A digitized network of the Nairobi power grid was obtained from KPLC in form of shapefiles.
Description of the data Transmission stations are supplied by transmission lines that carry 220kv of electricity from the generating power stations. Feeders take up transmission at stepped down voltages of 66kv and supplies this to primary substations distributed throughout the area. Distribution begins at these primary substations where power is further stepped down to 11kv Distribution lines supply to secondary transmission stations commonly referred to as transformers.
Manipulation of the data A small part of the network was extracted.
Data capture and editing Attributes of the layers were edited so as to link the distribution network to the transmission network This was done considering the origin and destination of the transmission and distribution lines in relation to the stations. Personal geodatabase was created within which tabular relationships were formulated.
Data capture and editing cont
Data capture and editing cont A field called state was added to each table. It would be used to determine and show that areas affected by a particular line or station is either on or off. Query statements were then written for every attribute table. A graphic user interface was created for direct access of the database. Web page design.
Results Database GUI
Results cont The queries basically change zeroes to ones and vice versa. When a station is off then the field called state contains zeroes only and the converse is true
Disruptions map
Conclusions Connections between different parts of the network were established and therefore linking distribution and transmission network. A graphic display in the form of a map of power interruptions was created thus giving consumers a visual outlook of the extent of power outage coverage. The web page created enables storage of information on power interruptions for past, present and future occurrences.
Recommendations The system should be adopted to supplement the current notices in the newspapers. To reach out to as many consumers as possible KPLC can share the page through as many social networks as possible. From this project a real time application showing power availability in an area at a particular time can be developed. Using the database created, other aspects of power transmission and distribution other than power interruptions can be included such as public safety in relation to power, organization of priority services etc.
THE END THANK YOU! azuh.ruzuna@gmail.com