A low cost surveillance and remote control system for improving the performance of 11 kV overhead networks

2.7 million customers in the UK are supplied from 11 kV overhead networks. On average, they lose their supply for about 4 hours each year compared with about 30 minutes for their counterparts in urban areas fed from underground cables. The reducing costs and increasing reliability of microprocessors have enabled Electricity Boards to install large telecontrol systems for the remote control of their primary distribution networks operating at 33 kV and 132 kV. This investment has enabled the Boards to minimise the effects of faults on the EHV network, but has not markedly reduced the duration of outages arising from the vulnerability of the extensive 11 kV networks, where most of the interruptions to customer supplies occur