THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: KSEB Limited is planning to develop indigenous ‘communicating fault passage detectors’ to solve the serious handicap the utility suffers in promptly identifying the location of faults in overhead lines. The ‘fault passage detectors’ now available in the market are inappropriate on two counts: one, most do not have the automatic communication facility and would need considerable alterations, and two, even with this handicap they are prohibitively costly; each non-communicating piece costing upwards of Rs 12,000. KSEBL will require nearly 5,000 ‘communicating fault passage detectors’ to end prolonged power failures across the state.
“We have decided to develop indigenous CFPDS because some of our field officers have already developed fault passage detectors with communication facility," a top KSEBL official said. "So it has been decided to explore the possibility of making use of these designs to manufacture sufficient number of CFPDs,” he added. KSEBL had in 2017 adopted ‘enhancing the reliability of power supply’ as one of its primary targets. Analysis of relevant outage data reveal that a significant proportion of interruptions is due to high-tension feeder faults.
KSEBL is presently facing serious difficulties in speedy identification of the location of faults occuring in high-tension overhead lines, each line on an average extending to nearly 10 kms. This is leading to inordinate delay in locating the points of fault and restoring power supply. The delay is especially long in the hilly districts of Wayanad and Idukki.
“The condition of prolonged power failure in the faulty segment of the lines due to the time taken to locate faults and momentary interruptions even in the healthy part of the same line due to repeated test chargings without identifying the location of faults is eroding the reliability profile of the organisation and is causing considerable customer dissastisfaction,” the official said. Installation of CFPDs along overhead 11 kV lines is found to be a practical means of speedy identification of the location of faults. The suggestion has been accepted by all project management units engaged in the process of plan formulation and the plan is to install 5,000 CFPDs approximately.
