Hierarchical Federated Learning for Privacy-Aware Transmission Line Defect Detection

INTRODUCTION: Transmission line defect detection is one of the most conventional and fundamental maintenance tasks in power grids. Its performance in terms of detection accuracy, efficiency, and privacy protection directly affects the operational safety of power systems. Federated learning is considered a secure architecture for cross regional defect detection due to its advantages in data privacy and collaborative training. OBJECTIVES: The current mainstream two-layer federated learning architecture is difficult to balance detection accuracy with computational and communication efficiency in the face of limited on-site resources in the power grid, and cannot meet the requirements of collaborative transmission line defect detection across multiple regions. To address these issues, this paper proposes a circuit defect detection method based on HFL (Hierarchical Federated Learning, HFL). METHODS: First, a three-layer federated learning architecture is introduced, where an additional edge layer is incorporated to reduce the computational burden and communication load on the central server. Then, a client dynamic allocation method based on two-factor clustering is proposed. By calculating similarity between client models, clients with approximately independent and identically distributed data are assigned to corresponding edge servers, thereby enhancing training efficiency and detection accuracy for both client and edge models. RESULTS: Compared to the two-layer federated learning model, the proposed algorithm reduces the computational cost and communication load by 66.67% and 66.86% respectively, while maintaining accuracy and exhibiting stronger generalization ability. CONCLUSION: The proposed HFL with dynamic client grouping effectively addresses the challenges of data privacy and resource constraints in power grid scenarios. It successfully balances detection accuracy with computational and communication efficiency, offering a practical and scalable solution for collaborative transmission line defect detection across multiple regions.