Development of an Automatic Phase Selector for Nigerian Power Utility Customers
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Date
2024-07-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
College of Engineering, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria
Abstract
Power utility customers in a developing country like Nigeria have constituted a habit of changing the electricity supply line
from an unavailable or unstable phase to the most available or stable phase. The category of customers involved in this character are
those on single phase power supply. However, this act is being carried out manually at the meter point using the cut-out fuses. This
attitude results in phase unbalances, overheating electrical equipment including feeder pillars, transformer coils, network faults, and
overall system instability. Thus, this paper presents the development of an Automatic Phase Selector for Nigerian Power Utility
Customers. The device automatically selects an available phase from the three-phase power supply lines. The research comprises
designing an automatic phase selector circuit, simulation of the designed circuit, programming code development in C- Language for
the microcontroller, construction of the designed circuit, and carrying out tests on completed work done to ascertain the effectiveness of
the developed system. The system operation involved a three-phase supply from the closest distribution network of the power utility
company which is connected to a three-in-one gang switch while the switching ON and OFF of their static switches represent phase-off
in an ideal situation. The operational results of this system are presented in the form of the truth table which indicates that the affected
customer would not have a power supply only when the 3-phases are under voltage or overvoltage or unavailable. This implies that one
of the three phases that meet the three criteria would be switched ON. A pure sine wave was used as input into the Optocoupler and the
output waveform of the rectified pulsating signal is separately displayed. This output waveform is very clean and noiseless. Finally, the
system when practically tested with an unbalanced three-phase supply, worked perfectly enhancing the flexibility of operating an
Automatic Phase selector and hence avoiding manual switching of the phase selector which has been attributed to changing of cut-out
fuses and associated stress as well as having a user-friendly phase selector.