The Business Bytes
TBB BUREAU
BHUBANESWAR, JUNE 29, 2021
In the last few months, TPCODL has faced a few challenges like Cyclone ‘YAAS’, regular Nor’westers, second wave of Covid-19 pandemic etc., but it’s focus on uninterrupted power supply has been undeterred.
In its bid to prevent breakdown/forced outages and reduce inconvenience to its customers, it has been working on condition based maintenance, which can be achieved by ascertaining the health condition of the equipment and identifying its need for maintenance. Thermal Scanning of equipment is carried out through ‘Thermal Imaging Cameras’.
The thermal imagining cameras are used to detect hotspots or areas of concern where a failure is about to happen due to overheating of the equipment/network. These hotspots are detected well in advance and appropriate preventive measures are carried out which helps in preventing possible disruption of power supply.
Condition based maintenance for the 33 kV and 11 kV network has been initiated in 3 divisions of Bhubaneswar. Using Thermal Scanning technique, a total of 2174 Distribution Transformers and 1054km line length of 11KV Feeder were scanned via Thermal Imaging Cameras. It has helped in identifying 1780 hotspots with temperature greater than 100ⴰC which were immediately taken up for corrective action by respective maintenance teams. It has helped prevent equipment failure thereby improving reliability. The enclosed picture depicts the process.
The areas identified for Thermal Scanning were done keeping essential services such as COVID Hospitals, Oxygen Plants, Vaccination Centres, Quarantine Centres etc. as the top priority followed by other important services.
