Grid monitoring
where it’s most needed

Hospital power outages can have dire consequences, derailing crucial procedures and even claiming lives. Reports from northern Ghana of newborns lost due to power-related complications speak to the critical role that access to high-quality electricity plays in the delivery of healthcare services.

Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, has ambitious plans to reform its power sector and increase electrification. One piece of this strategy is the federal government’s Energizing Economies Initiative (EEI), which aims to provide electricity solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in “economic clusters” such as markets, shopping complexes, and agricultural/industrial clusters. In many developing regions, SMEs in the informal sector play a major role in the economy. Nigeria is no exception: these enterprises employ millions of people. Providing affordable and reliable electricity to these marketplaces is important for continued economic growth.

Knowing the structure of the grid—how lines interconnect and what phases loads are on—is vital for efficient grid maintenance and operations, informing applications ranging from fault localization to phase balancing. Yet, grid structures, especially in distribution, can change over time and are often poorly known. This blog starts to explore how nLine’s voltage data could be used to infer grid structure, with a vision toward eventually providing such insight to utilities.