Raahen Energia is a Finnish energy company providing electricity distribution and related services to customers in the Raahe region. The company is committed to improving grid reliability and leveraging modern technologies to enhance customer experience.
Raahen Energia recently experienced its first cable fault since implementing Safegrid’s Intelligent Grid System®. Thanks to the system’s accurate fault location capabilities, the team was able to quickly isolate the problem, reduce the outage area, and restore power efficiently, saving both time and resources.
Challenge
The incident occurred during the night, when a fault appeared in Raahen Energia’s underground cable network. Late-night faults are particularly challenging with limited resources on standby and the urgent need to restore service quickly.
Without reliable fault location data, utilities can spend hours pinpointing the source of the issue, extending outage times and affecting more customers than necessary.
“When you wake up in the middle of the night to a fault and you need to make sensible decisions, it makes it a lot easier when you know the fault location,” says Rauno Karvonen, Operations Manager from Raahen Energia.
Solution
Safegrid’s Intelligent Grid System® detected the fault immediately and provided a precise fault location in real time. With this information, Raahen Energia’s team was able to perform targeted switching to isolate the affected section and minimize the outage area.
The system located the fault approximately 137 meters from the actual damaged site, a highly accurate result for an underground cable event. During the inspection, Raahen Energia found the issue in a damaged cable splice. The damage was clearly visible in the splice upon closer examination, confirming Safegrid’s detection.
Result
Thanks to Safegrid’s real-time monitoring and analytics, Raahen Energia:
- Located the cable fault quickly and accurately (within ~137 meters)
- Reduced the outage area through targeted switching
- Saved valuable time during diagnosis and repair
This cable fault demonstrated the effectiveness of Safegrid’s Intelligent Grid System® in providing actionable insights, even under demanding conditions. By enabling faster, data-driven decisions, Safegrid helped Raahen Energia restore service efficiently and improve overall network reliability.