Under the reliability program Belgorodenergo will replace 205 oil circuit breakers in 2012

This year under the program of improving the reliability of power equipment specialists of IDGC of Centre — Belgorodenergo division will replace 205 outdated 10-35-110 kV oil circuit breakers at substations for modern vacuum and gas-insulated ones and will put 306 arc protection devices into operation. To improve the reliability of control current systems eight new low maintenance battery systems and DC control systems will be installed.

The program of improving the reliability of power facilities provides for a variety of activities to replace obsolete equipment at substations and on 6-110 kV power lines for new and modern ones. In general, this will increase the reliability of electricity supply in the Belgorod region.

To reduce the number of outages of bus bar sections, power engineers will replace 160 oil 10 kV circuit breakers with modern vacuum devices with microprocessor-based relay protection. The new equipment has a low fire risk and has the best features in terms of mechanical wear and number of switching cycles, a larger set of protection features and automation. The application of microprocessor-based relay protection allows at an early stage to identify a fault in the equipment, preventing its failure. To prevent damage to high-voltage bays of 6-10 kV switchgear and control gear 306 arc protection devices will be installed.

In order to improve the reliability of the equipment power engineers will replace over 11 thousand insulators on 35-110 kV overhead lines and about 2.3 thousand lightning protectors for 6-110 kV surge arresters at 6 (10) kV and 35-110 kV transformer substations. At four major substations 15 high-voltage bushings on power transformers will be replaced for bushings with solid RIP insulation.

To improve the control current systems reliability it is planned to install eight new low maintenance battery systems and DC control systems at substations, which require virtually no maintenance and completely exclude the emissions of reactive elements in the environment.

320 current transformers of 10 kV and 30 transformers of 6-10 kV and 35 kV will be replaced in order to improve the technical characteristics of power equipment, to increase the accuracy of metering and to improve the quality of the formation of electricity transmission volume.

Deputy Director for Technical Issues — Chief Engineer of the branch Denis Yagodka stressed: “Our goal is reliable and uninterrupted operation of equipment, reduction of losses and high quality power supply to consumers”.