DiTeR is a modular dynamic thermal rating (DTR) software designed to predict the thermal state of power lines in given operating and weather conditions. It can be used as a stand-alone program, via an online interface enabling the use of meteorological data, or as a part of operative system. Besides the thermal state, it can predict the maximum load allowed in given weather conditions and, for a given overload situation, the time till overheat. In 2019, we successfully completed tests required for its transfer to operational use, and successfully deployed DiTeR to operational use for 27 transmission lines in the Slovenian power network. In 2019, we also deployed DiTeR pilot into the Croatian transmission network. DiTeR is since 2020 marketed on the world-wide market by company Operato, a member of the ELES Group.

The core of the DiTeR is a physical model for the simulation of heat transfer within the transmission power line under realistic weather conditions, where ambient temperature, wind velocity, rain rate, humidity, pressure and solar irradiance are considered as major factors of influence. DiTeR comprises the heat transport through the power line, heat generation by Joule heating and heat exchange with surrounding via convection, solar heating, radiation, rain impinging and evaporation. The DiTeR problem can be stated as the problem of heat transport with non-linear boundary conditions describing different heat terms due to the weather conditions.

Although DiTeR can run in as a standalone software, it is targeted to primarily run as an embedded system within the SUMO framework, a heterogeneous collection of subsystem from different vendors that was developed to increase safety and security as well as the capacity of the

existing transmission network. Its core is the integration platform, SUMO BUS, which is an enterprise integration bus, used for orchestrating the subsystems and facilitating data exchange between them. The communication between SUMO BUS and the subsystems is based on web services. More precisely, subsystems communicate with the bus via SOAP/HTTP interfaces. The purpose of DiTeR is to provide time evolution of thermal state of the power line with respect to the operational conditions and weather conditions. However, this simulation can be also used to predict operational safety limits. For each time step DiTeR runs nested simulation and computes the maximal current at which power line will not surpass safety limit assuming stationary weather conditions, referred also to as a thermal current. Besides thermal current DiTeR computes also the maximal time the power line can be safely utilized with higher current than thermal current, referred also to as time to overheat. Back end is the executable, that calculates DTR from user or machine provided input parameters. It is written in C++14 and can be compiled with GCC toolchain.

Diter has already been deployed in Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania and Israel.

Related projects

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