A NEW ScottishPower remote control system is making sure that customers who suffer loss of power due to a fault are re-connected within minutes.

A £32,000 project in the North Cumbernauld, Castlecary and Bonnybridge area has already ensured that people who lost their power supply during a recent fault were back on supply again within half an hour.

This project in North Lanarkshire has included the commissioning of tele-controllable equipment at strategic points in the local network.

Project Manager Graham Campbell said:

“A new substation was installed at Banknock West service station with further telecontrol equipment installed at Cannerton and at Walker Drive in Bonnybridge. All three substations were successfully commissioned in October 2007.

“We really didn’t have to wait long to see the benefit this particular project has brought to our customers.

“In fact, less than a month after succesful implementation of this equipment, a fault developed beyond Cannerton and as a result of the equipment installed, only 723 customers lost their power supply, where previously more than 1,740 might have.

“Furthermore, the 723 customers who did lose power supplies, all had their power restored within 24 minutes utilising our telecontrol system to re-configure the network remotely from our Operational Control Centre in Kirkintilloch.’’

Graham added:

“This is a great example of how this equipment is bringing significant benefits to our customers, not only here but across our whole network area. Being able to re-configure the network remotely is far more beneficial to our customers, as our focus is to maintain power supply at all times.”

The work being carried out in the Cumbernauld, Castlecary and Bonnybridge areas is part of a large scale approach ScottishPower is taking to upgrade fault restoration on its underground and overhead networks.

Media information: Jane Holmes 0141 636 4557