By IANS,
Gurgaon : All sub-stations of state-owned transmission company Power Grid will be unmanned and remotely managed by next year, chairman R.N. Nayak said Tuesday.
In place of personnel, Nayak said, “there will be cameras watching the functioning of devices and equipment and the stations will be totally managed remotely by the National Transmission Asset Management Centre at Manesar.”
Addressing an international conference here on high voltage surge arresters technology, Nayak said having eight persons per substation was a waste of human resources.
Surge arresters are critical in transmission in limiting switching and lightning surges on main equipments like transformers, reactors and circuit breakers.
Nayak also called for domestic manufacturing of line arresters and Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV) circuit protection devices.
“Line arresters are the future. We are ready to give our full support to the industry, but they should focus on manufacturing line arresters as these are urgently needed in the transmission lines in north Bengal, evacuating power from the North Eastern States.”
According to Power Grid, surge arresters required for the 1,200 kV National Test Station at Bina, Madhya Pradesh, have been developed indigenously and are in operation since Feb 2012.
Power Grid has a pan-India presence with around 95,329 circuit-km of transmission network.