[2023] All About Preventive Maintenance of Transmission Line

    Transmission line is exposed to various environmental and operational stresses that can affect their performance and reliability. Therefore, effective preventive maintenance of transmission line is required to ensure safety, efficiency and stability of the system because they are expensive to build and maintain. Preventive maintenance reduces the failure rate of the transmission line minimizing  the cost related to transmission line outage.

    Preventive maintenance includes inspecting tower foundations, earthing, conductors, insulators, clearing trees and vegetation e.t.c. to prevent faults causing power outage or power loss. 

Methods For the Preventive Maintenance of Transmission Line

    The most effective methods for the preventive maintenance of the transmission line are listed below.

1. Inspection and Monitoring
2. Cleaning and Washing
3. Repair and Replacement
4. Upgrading and Retrofitting
5. Testing
6. Tightening Lose Connections

Maintenance Schedule of Transmission Line

    The maintenance schedule of transmission line are listed below.

Immediately

1. Foundation-Back-filling or Soil Removal
2. Replacement of Broken or Damaged Insulator in Normal Areas ( More than Three per String )
3. Replacement of Broken or Damaged Insulator in Polluted Areas ( More than Two per String )
4. Attention to the Hot Spots
5. Tighten Bolt, Nuts and Anchor Bolts
6. Attending of Damage to Tower Earthing

Quarterly

1. Replacement of Danger, Number, Phase and Circuit Plate

Half Yearly

1. Cleaning of Insulator in Populated Areas - Critical or Heavy Pollution

Yearly

1. Replacement of Broken or Damaged Insulator in Normal Areas - ( Three or Less per String )
2. Cleaning of Insulators in Polluted Areas - Normal or Light Pollution
3. Re-Fixing of Vibration Dampers of Conductor or Earth Wire
4. Thermo-Vision Scanning of Highly Loaded Lines ( Normal Power Flow above 120% of SIL Rating ) on Sample Basis ( 10% of the Tension Tower Jumpers )

On Need Basis

1. Inspection of the tower after climbing the tower.
2. Punctured Insulator Detection in Insulator Failure Prone Stretches

Advantages of Preventive Maintenance of Transmission line

1. Reduces Unplanned Outage
2. Increases Lifespan
3. Cheaper than Shutdown Maintenance
4. Improves Efficiency and Reliability

Conclusion

    Hope, you have clearly understand about the preventive maintenance of transmission line, its methods, schedule and advantages. Make sure to leave your opinion and suggestion about this post in the comment section below.