A sophisticated remote control system is set to ensure that ScottishPower customers enjoy a better quality of power supply.

An £83,000 project in Lesmahagow will reduce the amount of time it takes to re-connect power to homes after a network fault.

The initiative in the South Lanarkshire village has included the commissioning of tele-control equipment at strategic points in the local network.

Project Manager Graham Campbell said:

“This was a priority circuit for the installation of this equipment and we have now installed tele-control at six network substations.

“This should ensure significantly reduced restoration times for customers who have lost their power supply during fault conditions, for example, during storms or high winds. The tele-control system means that remotely, from our Operational Control Centre, we can restore supply to those customers outwith the faulted zone much quicker, whilst our staff are travelling to the site to repair the fault.”

In fact, during a recent fault in the area more than 2000 customers were left without power but by using the new tele-control equipment ScottishPower managed to get over a third of people restored within half an hour and all restored within one hour. Typically, before the installation of this equipment, all these customers may have been off supply for 2 hours or more.

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 Lesmahagow 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