Homes and businesses in the north of Aberdeen are set to benefit from a major upgradeproject at the city's Springhill substation, which delivers the power to over 11,000 properties.
The project, which started in May and is scheduled to becomplete by the end of November,is part of SSEN Distribution's city-wide £10m investment programme andwill see the existing switchgear replaced by the latest automated versions, an upgrade in technology which will make a big difference to the 11,300 homes and businesses who get their power from the substation,and also the teams ofengineers who keep the power flowing round the clock.
Springhill is what's known as a "primary" substation, as it represents the first (or 'primary') stop in electricity's journey from the grid; it is also notable as being the substation with the single largest number of customers in SSEN Distribution's Scottish network, which runs from north of the central belt to the top of the mainlandand further on to Orkney and Shetland and includes all of Scotland's main island groups.
As a primary substation, Springhill's transformers reduce the voltage of electricity it receives from the main grid so that it can be used in our homes and businesses; from here it is then distributed across SSEN's network of 172 smaller secondary 'local substations in the north of the city, before making the last leg of its journey through the underground cables into customers' properties.
Margaret Riach is one of SSEN's Project Managers responsible for overseeing the £10m city-wide investment, and explains how automation is helping to keeping the power flowing:
"The benefits of this new automated equipment are twofold; firstly, it will make a big difference to the service we can provide our customers and secondly, it gives our engineers in the control room a 24hr real-time overview of the electricity network where in the past we would have needed onsite visits to get the same information.
"When a fault causes our safety equipment to operate and turn the power off, the new technology can automatically isolate the particular section of network where the fault is and will switch the power back on for the remaining properties if safe to do so often in a matter of minutes.This will significantly reduce the duration of a power cut for customers,as previously a member of our local team would have needed to go to the substation and manually turn the power back on."
The work at Springhill is just part of SSEN Distribution's major investment in Aberdeen, with a similar project also underway at Bridge of Don substation and further upgrade work due to commence at St Machar and Craigton before the end of this year.