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EDS HV completes Rhyl Flats maintenance

4C Offshore | Tom Russell
By: Tom Russell 17/09/2020 EDS HV
EDS HV Group completed the substation maintenance works at RWE Renewables' Rhyl Flats project during the COVID-19 lockdown, while adhering to government guidelines and strict social distancing measures.

Every electrical asset at the substation required maintenance, including 132kV open mesh switches, power transformers, auxiliary transformers, battery systems, shunt reactors and all 33kV switchgear panels. It was completed within two days, ensuring the wind farm’s continued generation of renewable energy.

Rauri Maguire, Operations and Maintenance Engineer, EDS HV said: “RWE Renewables have an Operations and Maintenance contract in place with EDS HV for full high voltage network management at Rhyl Flats Offshore Wind Farm. This means it’s our responsibility to plan scheduled maintenance activities in conjunction with our client and other stakeholders effectively. By keeping in contact with the distribution network operator we scheduled our maintenance activities around a planned network outage, therefore successfully maximising network availability by making effective use of an existing outage.”

As part of EDS HV’s commitment to training and development, accompanying the five-strong engineering team were two trainee Control Engineers. The trainees were given hands-on experience during the maintenance campaign through working alongside Senior Authorised Persons (SAP) within the team. They experienced first-hand the various practical steps taken by the SAPs in the application of Safety from the System to facilitate the maintenance activities.

Maguire continued: “Control Engineers in a centralised Control Centre setting are rarely exposed to site operations as their job involves coordinating operational and safety activities on the high voltage network from the Control Centre. Having a fuller understanding of site operations and other environment factors that SAPs deal with as part of their role is vital for the development of our Control Engineers as they continuously work in partnership within their colleagues across our portfolio on a daily basis."

Rhyl Flats is located off the coast of North Wales. Construction of the the project began in 2008 and it was fully commissioned in December 2009 following its first production on 15th July, 2009. The wind farm comprises  25 Siemens 3.6 MW offshore wind turbines and with a maximum installed capacity of 90MW, the project provides enough electricity to meet the demands of approximately 61,000 homes annually.

For more information on offshore wind farms worldwide, click here.

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