MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT IN ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION

SYSTEM THROUGH COMPUTER APPLICATION

Lus Campos Pinto (PRT)

ABSTRACT
The necessity to have a tool for a uniform management of all maintenance aspects, the
Portuguese National Grid - REN (company of EDP Group) carried out an implementation of
a computerised maintenance management system for application in electric transmission
installations (substations and lines).
This system consists of a modular software package, a hardware configuration and
communication network.
The specifications of hardware configuration are considered to be a local computer in each
zone with maintenance personnel to update data.
The local computers are connected via modem, using our own telecommunication network,
with a central computer.
The paper describes the characteristics of the maintenance management system, structure and
capabilities of maintenance software and the hardware configuration and communication
network.

1. INTRODUCTION
The Rede Elctrica Nacional, the transmission company of EDP Group, is responsible in
Portugal for the power transmission network (400, 220 and 150 kV) and dispatching activity.
The power transmission network comprises of 5 926 kilometres of transmission lines and 48
substations with transformers with capacity of 16 269 MVA.
The annual demand is 31 912 GWh with a peak load of 5 842 MW.
In order to ensure a safe and high quality power supply REN put a lot of effort into
maintaining the electric network.

For this goal, in 1996, we decided to implement a computerised maintenance management

system for a uniform and safe management of all maintenance activities.

2. MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The maintenance management is an integral system to organise all maintenance activities
which it is possible budgeting, programming, work running, reporting, evaluation and
planning the works continually with actualised data of immediate access.

Fig. 1 shows the graphical functions of this system.

PLANNING
ANALISYS AND
CONTROL

BUDGETING

PROCEDURES

INFORMATION

PROGRAMMING

EXECUTION

Fig.1

Planning Maintenance

Planning function is the area where we take the basic decisions and establish the maintenance
goals.
The planning generate a workload whose cost is quantified in budget.

Budgeting

The elaboration of budget requires up-to-date costs for the material, manpower and other
resources.
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After your approbation, the workload goes to programming function.

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Programming

The work orders adapt to the models of established control and the scheduled dates consider
the availability of manpower and equipment calendar.
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Execution

The works are made with internal personnel or with personnel of service companies, under
supervision of REN.
Preventive and predictive maintenance is made up logically according to maintenance
procedures of each equipment.
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Information

After completion of work, the work results are input to the maintenance work reporting.
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Analysis and Control

The work report has a double function; it permits to know and to control the adaptation level
of maintenance guidelines for each procedure and on the other hand, to know and to control
the maintenance costs. These costs are available for other planning.
For your plant, a computerised management system with several adequately structured
databases is necesssary.

3.

STRUCTURE AND CAPABILITIES OF THE MAINTENANCE SOFTWARE

During the analysis phase we considered several hypothesises to implement the maintenance
software, development internally with our resources, till it acquire other utilities for with
similar maintenance organisation.
Our option was an adequate basic software package, with good flexibility to adapt to our
organisation and maintenances goals, it was developed by a French software house.
Others main characteristics have been required for the program:
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Easy to handle user interface since the personnel dont have special knowledge about the
PCs interior;
Capability to handle extensive databases with acceptable time effort;
Modular software structure with an option to use those features first which are most
important and the other ones later the progress of the project.

The selected software comprises of the following areas:

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Technical equipment management: the Technical management modules integrate the full
management of repairable items. This allows the user to easily follow the movements of
equipment and to know each equipments technical characteristics, list of the spare parts,
drawings and manuals.
Framework data: On this module we establish the different resources, employees for each
resource, supervisor (foreman), organisation of labour via supervisor, calendars available
for each employee, internal personnel costs, and so on.
Planning and scheduling: it allows the user to prepare and manage planned maintenance
within the constraints of the day to day workload.
Work-in-progress: this module is where work orders can be created and do a complete or
partial feedback with manpower hours, spares and material/tool usage and direct or
transient items purchased for the jobs, incidents or defects noted, repair time and
production loss. After a complete feedback this module creates the data and transfers the
completed work orders from Work in Progress to History data.
History and analysis: on this area it is possible to know what happened last time with each
piece of equipment. The Analysis module provides many different analysis reports for
various performance data such as the costs, downtime and actual hors vs. planned hours
taken for jobs. These reports can be generated for any specific period.
Report generator: an essential tool for evaluations of the actual databases, eg. equipment
costs in a certain time period, list of equipment of a certain family, personnel costs in a
certain zone, power transformers of a certain manufacturer. All information of the
different databases can be used to create the report.

4. HARDWARE CONFIGURATION AND COMMUNICATION NETWORK

The hardware configuration and the communication network are shown in fig.2.

Fig. 2
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The maintenance software running on a central server where the local workstations (personal
computer) access through the local Ethernet network.
The remote workstations are connected via modem, using our own telecommunication
network, through a communication server connected too with the local Ethernet network.
For a good operation the transmission speed minimum will be 9 600 BPS.

5. IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPUTERISED MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM
After the software choice, it was necessary to structure the databases and to implement the
hardware and communication network.
These important areas of project took place in parallel and were implemented with phased
form.
Firstly, on different equipment groups, we have considered the substations power equipment
and after the transmission lines and the others substations equipment.
The development of hardware network has occurred gradually for different geographic zones
with maintenance staff.

6. CONCLUSION
A computerised maintenance management is a powerful tool for improving the quality and
safety of electricity supply. An adequate implementation of this system has long-term effects
concerning the increase of reliability and availability of equipment and reducing maintenance
costs.
For this project it was very important the selection of software and establishment an adequate
structure for databases.
The development of the maintenance management system is a process continuous and
progressive, using continually the information of the actualised databases.