Inspecting equipment of a power system
View Patent ↗A method of inspecting equipment of a power system can involve identifying a geographical area including a presumed faulty piece of equipment with a central computer system of the power system; determining a contact (e.g., a person) at the geographical area; sending a request for inspecting local equipment in the geographical area to the person; taking a picture, by the person, of a piece of local equipment; transmitting the picture to the central computer system; and evaluating at the central computer system, whether the piece of local equipment in the picture is faulty or not.
1. A method of evaluating a piece of equipment of a power transmission or distribution system, the method comprising:
identifying a geographical area including a presumed faulty piece of equipment with a central computer system, the presumed faulty piece of equipment being a piece of equipment of the power transmission or distribution system comprising masts and/or power poles, power lines and/or overhead lines, transformers, breakers and switches, and the geographical area being identified by a condition of electricity supply in the geographical area;
determining a contact at the geographical area comprising registering a person at the central computer system, receiving GPS coordinates of a mobile device of the person in the central computer system, and determining the person by checking whether the GPS coordinates of the mobile device are at the geographical area;
sending a first request to the mobile device for inspecting local equipment in the geographical area to the contact, wherein the request includes GPS coordinates of the presumed faulty piece of equipment and a request for annotation;
guiding the contact with the mobile device to the presumed faulty piece of equipment by the GPS coordinates;
taking a picture with the mobile device, via the contact, of the presumed faulty piece of equipment;
annotating the picture on the mobile device, as to whether the presumed faulty piece of equipment is faulty or not according to an opinion of the contact;
determining GPS coordinates with the mobile device of the contact, when taking the picture;
transmitting the picture from the mobile device to the central computer system;
sending a second request for evaluating the presumed faulty piece of equipment together with the picture and annotation to a selected person from a group of registered persons for analysis; and
transmitting an analysis result from the selected person to the central computing system.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the geographical area is further identified based on at least one of:
weather conditions in that area and a person residing in the geographical area.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the request for inspecting local equipment is indicates a specific piece of local equipment, including one of the masts and/or power poles, power lines and/or overhead lines, transformers, breakers and switches.
4. The method of claim 1 , comprising:
before transmitting the picture to the central computer system, automatically verifying, whether the picture shows a piece of equipment of the power transmission or distribution system.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein analyzing the picture comprises:
answering questions provided by a computing device, the questions including at least one of:
whether there is a piece of equipment shown in the picture;
what type of piece of equipment is shown in the picture;
whether a piece of equipment shown in the picture is faulty.
6. The method of claim 1 , comprising:
sending the second request for evaluating the picture to more than one selected person for analysis; and
comparing analysis results of the selected persons.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first request further includes an archived picture of the presumed faulty piece of equipment.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the contact is a customer of a power company operating the power transmission or distribution system.