The concept of strategic facilities covers plants, substations and transmission trunks which, if turned off by electrical problems or destroyed / damaged for any other reasons, the interruption of its services may lead to the occurrence of loss of big generation blocks and even blackouts, causing a big impact on society.

From the knowledge of strategic facilities, ONS, with the participation of the involved agents, began in 2012 and continued throughout 2013 and 2014 the following actions:

• Identification / update of the set of assisted substations.
• Information Improvement on environmental weather conditions (rain and direction of winds, lightning, air temperature, atmospheric pressure) and burnings, available in control centers, to prepare the BIPS for any multiple contingencies.
• Interaction with the expansion planning area for defining ribs to minimize the consequences of certain multiple losses.
• Implementation of new Special Protection Systems (SEPs).
• Improvement of the new SEPs projects to minimize their accidental or incorrect performances.
• Adoption of more conservative criteria when maintenance services are performed in these facilities.
• Adoption of special criteria for the testing of black-start devices of the generating units.

To meet the requirements in MME Ordinance No. 43 of February 4, 2013, a working group consisting of representatives of the MME, Aneel, EPE, ONS and Cepel was created.

Under ONS’stechnical coordination, the studies counted on the participation of Cepel, EPE and the facilities owners agents. Their goal was to identify the substations that required complementary arrangement or other measures to improve their intrinsic safety. The work originally contemplated strategic substations, being expanded to consider all substations of the Basic Network and, later, include the substations outside the basic network affecting the supply of the federation state capitals.

 

Diagnosis of the current situation and proposals for improvements

At this stage of the work, 439 basic network facilities and an additional installation were analyzed, responsible for supplying a capital with 138 kV, which is part of ONS’s Operation Network.

In 210 of the Network Basic analyzed facilities, representing 48% of the total, additional proposals for improvement were not necessary. In other 50 analyzed facilities, corresponding to 11% of the total, the minimum criteria of the Network Procedures have been already met and had additional improvement proposals, to increase the reliability of the installation and the system as a whole. In all, 265 proposals were considered feasible, in 216 facilities, being in its deployment planning stage.