Using Whisker Lab’s Ting Sensor to Improve the Grid / Prevent Fires

Greetings IEEE Members of East TN, Come and join us on Oct 16th at 6 PM to hear our ownTheo Laughner share a talk entitled “Using the Whisker Lab’s Ting Sensor to Improve Grid Health While Protecting Homes from Electrical Fire Hazards” (abstract below). The talk will be held at the Zeanah Engineering Complex, University of Tennessee Knoxville Room: 270-278, Parking in G10 Lot. Come, join us and bring a friend! We should have a short tour of the building as well. Abstract: Electrical fires impact nearly 50,000 homes each year. These fires cause approximately $1.3B in property losses each year and result in thousands of injuries and deaths annually. A low-cost sensor network has been deployed in over 1M homes with the primary goal of preventing electrical fires.While the prevention of electrical fires was the primary focus of the sensor network, the data collected is also useful in describing the power quality performance of utilities where the sensors are deployed. By aggregating data from individual homes, the performance of areas within a utility can be described and more broadly the overall performance of each utility. The system records voltage sags, voltage swells, voltage interruptions and harmonic distortion.Previous studies (EPRI, 2022) namely DPQI, DPQII, and DPQ/TPQIII have been previously conducted by EPRI. While those studies were limited by the few utilities involved. Interestingly, the data has good correlation to the distributed sensor network described herein. In the report, the estimated impacts due to power quality disturbances was estimated between $145B and $240B USD. Naturally, knowing where these events occur, and fixing them in a timely fashion is important. Room: 270-278, Bldg: Zeanah Engineering Complex, 863 Neyland Dr, Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, 37916