The Finnish utility, Vakka-Suomen Voima, goes back more than 110 years. Operations first started in Uusikaupunki in 1909. Today Vakka-Suomen Voima operates in the area of nine municipalities in Satakunta and Varsinais-Suomi regions. Their network length exceeds 4 000 kilometers and serves over 25 000 customers.
With Safegrid, they hoped to improve their predictive maintenance capabilities to prevent outages before they occur.
They experienced earth fault trips and some end-customers had reported flickering lights, so somewhere along the network there had to be a faulty component, which was causing abnormalities in grid behavior.
With the help of Safegrid’s Intelligent Grid System™, teams were able to locate abnormal signals coming from a particular substation.
Once the substation was thoroughly inspected leaking switchgear was found. It had caused visible earth faults against the insulator body. Now as the fault was located and identified, the faulty breaker was immediately isolated. With the help of IGS-system earth fault was identified and located swiftly and after necessary repairs the grid was quickly restored back to optimal condition.
Safegrid´s solution helped Vakka-Suomen Voima achieve following improvements:
- Locate intermittent earth faults that are difficult to locate
- Prevent costly outages before they occur
- Save time and money in maintenance operations
“Safegrid has helped us to locate intermittent earth faults that have been difficult to locate. This has saved time and money in our maintenance operations” Mikko Heinonen, Operations Manager
