My Fingrid now provides more detailed information on faults and disturbances in the main grid.
“The service shows information on specific transmission lines and provides accurate calculated estimates of fault locations using sources such as the Finnish Meteorological Institute’s data on lightning strikes. This information could previously be found from several sources, but now it is all available in the same place, My Fingrid,” says Mika Pajuoja, Expert at Fingrid.
My Fingrid also provides information on electricity transmission metering, invoicing and reactive power.
My Fingrid is a digital service that customers can access by logging in to their accounts. It provides information such as electricity transmission metering, invoicing, and reactive power data.
“The service will continue to develop in response to customers’ wishes and feedback,” says Pajuoja.
Fingrid will continue to notify its customers of severe faults by text message or email as before.
“The text message and email service has also been improved. Messages are now sent nearly instantly, even at weekends.”
My Fingrid will allow organisations to specify which people should receive text message or email notifications.
“In the future, customers will be able to modify their information, but for now, the updates must be handled via Fingrid,” Pajuoja says.
Help with reporting and repairs
Information is sent directly from Fingrid’s supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system to customers’ SCADA systems. This also includes information about d isturbances.
“In the future, we want to provide more direct data like this to our customers so that they can see the status of the main grid on their own systems. However, we cannot publish electricity market data,” Pajuoja notes.
Teemu Suvela, Operations Manager at Elenia, a distribution system operator, is satisfied with the update.
“It is helpful to have all the data to hand in My Fingrid when we report electricity distribution outages to our customers and the authorities. We will have quicker and easier access to the facts we need, and we can compare them with our own information.”
Suvela says it is important to have information documented in one place, where it is easy to find in the future.
“For example, the information is useful when we analyse the condition of our network and the need for repairs,” he notes.
Fault repair crews sent to the right place
When disturbances are investigated, it may become apparent that, for example, several autoreclosures have occurred in quick succession on one transmission line and that the estimated fault locations are approximately correct.
“When we have access to the most accurate fault location data possible, it is easier for us to dispatch repair crews to the places where faults are likely to be,” Suvela says.
In a “right-of-use bay”, the bay, switchgear, and protective devices belong to Fingrid, but the 110-kilovolt line out of the substation belongs to the distribution system operator, who is also responsible for repairing it if necessary. The length of the 110-kilovolt line may range from a few kilometres to more than one hundred kilometres.
If a fault occurs in a 110-kilovolt radially feeded power line, it is immediately apparent to customers connected to the medium- and low-voltage networks.
“The resulting power outage could affect a large area. Although we can almost always restore the power supply to customers using reserve connections in the medium-voltage network, the 110-kilovolt line must be repaired quickly,” Suvela points out.
Planned outages
Mika Pajuoja says that approximately 300 faults arise in Fingrid’s main grid or installations every year.
The most common causes of outages are lightning strikes and birds soiling the insulator chains.
“In around two hundred of these cases, the outage only lasts about a second – the lights may flicker momentarily – before the network reconnects automatically. The most common cause of outages are lightning strikes and bird droppings soiling the insulator chains. In the winter, snow can accumulate on the lines and cause problems.”
In addition, there are approximately 1,200 planned outages in the main grid every year. These allow for maintenance work or the connection of new parts of the network, for example.
The grid has expanded dramatically in recent years, as dozens of new wind farms have been connected.
“This has also caused the number of planned outages to rise. End users barely notice planned outages because replacement connections are arranged to prevent interruptions in the power supply.”
