Substation designs define its operational health and maintenance

Talking about innovating electrical safety, emphasises innovating advanced products and solutions to control, monitor and enhance the operations and maintenance of a power substation.
How are current energy trends helping you add value to substation maintenance?
For critical assets like substations, the continuous shift from a concentrated to a distributed model of electricity generation and the ever-increasing proportion of renewable energy in the generation mix means the need for higher reliability, more efficient operations, and a more efficient and cost-effective maintenance approach. With a sizable proportion of these assets approaching retirement age, a predictive maintenance strategy is critical.
As a result, utilities and operators are targeting real-time, companywide access to information to manage their assets better. And this focus is being pushed by an ever-increasing number of intelligent electronic devices (IED), which can self-monitor the health attributes of assets and automatically report that information to facility operators, thereby helping to gain operational efficiencies and enabling asset management programs, including predictive maintenance for increased reliability, life extensions, and improved planning. The ISO 55000 asset management standard, which emphasises the criticality of understanding asset conditions and failure risks, becomes very relevant here.
One such area to be underscored for reliability is earthing and lightning protection, where Manav Energy has IIoT- ased products like (a) Remote Fault-Time Earth Monitoring (R-FERM), which provides an automated monitoring system for maintenance teams such that deteriorated earthing systems are addressed in time, and (b) Lightning Management and Alert System (LMAS), which predicts the occurrence of lightning, manages the high energy dissipation and provides advance alerts of lightning events. We believe this can add good value for health monitoring and predictive maintenance of substations.

What steps have you taken to ensure stable power delivery to substation load centres?
Substations are high-voltage electric system facilities used to switch generators, equipment, and circuits in and out of a system. They are also used to shift AC voltages from one level to another and switch AC to DC or vice versa.
The design of any substation is a combination of the quality and reliability of the power supply, as well as functionality, maintainability, and operational safety. It must enable the substations to continue operating under normal operating conditions and to regain an acceptable state of equilibrium after being subjected to small or large disturbances.
The highest priority in substations is to detect and isolate failures in the transmission system as quickly as possible. Short-circuit or overload currents in large substations can leave thousands of people without electricity. As such, the electrical equipment and circuits in substations must be protected to limit the damages that can be caused by abnormally high currents and overvoltages.
The protection equipment can detect abnormal and intolerable circumstances and take appropriate corrective action. Lightning arresters, surge protectors, fuses, relays, circuit breakers, reclosers, and other devices are examples of these devices. At Manav Energy, we are entrusted by our clients to evaluate the design of existing substations—either from a change in network loads they are catering to or for upgrading or expanding the distribution networks with additional equipment—for adequacy of earthing and lightning protection, by carrying out electrical safety audits of sub-stations, by designing earthing mats, through electromagnetic studies, etc.
How are technological and product/ service updates assisting you in managing and controlling downtime while lowering O&M costs?
Manav Energy started as an electrical safety and reliability company and expanded into deep research and development of IIoT online devices with an intent to improve productivity and operational efficiency through automation, thereby enabling a reduction in O&M costs.
Two such innovations are already on the market under the names:
• Remote Fault-Time Resistance Monitor (RFERM) works on patented technology and circumvents the need for manual logging and monitoring of earthing resistance through automated online monitoring network capability. Manual measurements can be error-prone, cumbersome during adverse weather conditions, and do not capture real- time system behaviour during fault events. R-FERM automates the measurement, continuously evaluates the healthiness of the earthing system, records fault-time information about the system remotely, consistently, and accurately, and prevents possible electrical accidents through active monitoring and proactive maintenance capability. Given the high reliability and low downtime requirements, such a system is imperative.
LMAS (The Lightning Management and Alert System) predicts lightning events and manages the high energy dissipation they cause. The Lightning Alert System (LAS) warns authorities and people working outside about the current unsafe conditions ahead of lightning. The LAS is electronically integrated with the LMS to form the LMAS, which detects, predicts, measures, and annunciates lightning conditions in a given environment, obviating the need for lightning-prone and remote areas to be manned. Not only does this provide safety to life and assets, but the resultant reliability also becomes an advantage for O&M activities.
What unique products and services do you provide to manage lightning strikes and electrical problems in substations?
We are one of the world’s leading experts in this field. We perform various audits, tests, measurements, analytical studies, modelling, and simulations. These help us calculate the adequacy of existing systems through risk assessment and implement suitable lightning protection and management systems that can provide adequate safeguards against direct and indirect lightning.
Our range of products includes not only conventional and active lightning protection systems but also lightning management and alert systems that can evaluate the possibility of an impending lightning strike and provide audio- visual alerts in advance, thereby enabling people to move to safety.
How do you plan to upgrade your services for efficient maintenance practices in light of the increasing demand for constant power?
We have ventured into providing expert services in the power sector. MEPL has on board eminent experts in all areas of power generation (from hydro, coalbased, gas-based, etc.), viz., operations, electrical, controls and instrumentation, power transmission and distribution, turbines, boilers, coal handling, plant balance, water chemistry.
These experts have spent considerable time in their respective areas and have a huge amount of experience. Based on their expertise and industry practises and standards, they can conduct technical audits, evaluate the asset conditions, and guide owners’ operations and maintenance teams on best practices, maintenance strategies, spare management, and emerging trends to improve reliability and performance. Once these expert audits are conducted, a time-based improvement plan is devised and implemented.
We have completed such value-added projects, which have positively impacted the plant’s performance.