Ethiopian Electric Power’s (EEP) Transmission Substation Operation Technical Support Department announced that latest technologies are applied for consistency and prevention power outages and provides better services.
According to the Director of the department, Mr. Abebaw Yalew, a procedure has been implemented to carry out inspection, maintenance and emergency works on high voltage transmission lines in a consistent manner in all regions.
He also mentioned that repairing broken components, power cables and distribution breakers need improvement.
High voltage transmission lines and distribution substations are being maintained to operate at their full capacity based on prevention investigation, he added.
According to the Director, EEP staff developed a software called ‘EEP South Cloud’ so as to record power interruptions and their causes.
The newly developed software has been applied to operations activities by the staff of the department to record the power outage and interruption as well as unserved energy.
A project called “Grid Modernization” has also been designed and implemented with “RTE” a French transmission company, according to Mr. Abebaw.
He explained that RTE is implementing a system called SAP plant maintenance module used to record the company’s assets down to the serial number.
Simultaneously, they are working together with Kenya’s Amotech Africa for having capacity building trainings for EEP engineers in the field of transformer and other tests, he stated.
This is an important step for EEP and good opportunity for technology and knowledge transfer and updating the existing knowhow of the engineering staff.
Depending on the database and records of EEP, the purchase of 40 earthing transformers and 46 thousand meters of power cables to prevent the main power transformer from possible damages for all different regions is on the process.
He also stated that EEP is preparing systems, procedures, policies, and manuals so as to apply them on all activities performed under the sector and follow the quality management system (QMS) and the principles of international standard of the institute.
He reminded that that the institute has approved and cascaded 7 procedures including occupational safety for all of the regions.