The Potential Impact Of Forest Fires Under High Voltage Power Lines

Danger to forest fire on electrical transmission lines

Discuss about The Potential Impact of Forest Fires Under High Voltage Power Lines.

The forest fires have been trapped under a higher voltage of the power lines with the high flames and the intense smoke in the line as per the electrical strength of the air and the ground faults. As per the research, these flashover voltages could be reduced through the hot air, conductive flames, and the colloidal smoke. There have been flashovers of the air gaps which are noticed in the forest fires. For the safety aspect, there have been potentials at the arcing points to handle the deterioration and detect the fire through the induced corona. (Butler et al., 2015). The potentials for the forest fires have a significant impact on the transmission facilities while there have been transmission lines through the southern portion. The transmission lines which are located in the forest areas have a higher risk which also pose a higher occurrence of the lighting. This directly strikes the reliability with the denser smoke from the wildfire circuits to go out of service. With the forest fires, there have been transmission lines for the right-of-way (ROW) where the wood poles can be burnt. The fire can force the outage of the transmission of the circuit if it can raise the air temperature around the conductors.

The fire generally outage the operating parameters with the thick smoke from the different nearby areas. The smoke can easily outage the phase-to-phase. The heavy smoking from the nearby areas could directly contaminate the line of transmission with the insulating medium through the surrounding conductor. The smoke can cause the phase-to-phase and phase-to-ground fault. (Ahuja et al., 2016). The forest fines are caused mainly due to the human sources of the human-caused ignition with the campfires, or the hot ash, sparks or the other equipment. There is a possibility of short circuiting from the faulty equipment through the power lines or the collisions of the aircraft. As per the research, there have been components of the risks of the fire through the higher voltage power line like the ignition points or the fuel build-up or the other weather conditions.

The climatic conditions are not controllable or the risk reduction measures which could not direct for the mitigation of the risks through the ignition sources which results in the fire in the forest areas. There have been non-human ignition sources which include the lightning and the interference by a large number of birds. Individual fuel sources include the living and other vegetation that has been adjacent to the ROWs. (Okano et al., 2015).

Bird and animal related hazards

The fire that has been caused by transmission and distribution lines are based on the allocation that is set to the shorter distance from the conductors to the ground level. This is because there has been close conductor phase. The birds and the Raptors in the forest areas direct to develop a particular pole with the roosting place. With this, there are two problems which are the droppings that can certainly be build up on the insulators to the point with the flash-over in between the conductors and the cross arm. This cause the fault in the line with the glow in the debris which falls to the ground level. At the time of landing, near the forest areas, there is a possibility that the wings of the large birds could touch the conductors which will be creating the short circuit. The last situation will let the bird turn into flames with the dried vegetation below the conductors. (Perry et al., 2015). The mitigation for the same includes the vegetation clearance through the poles that is used for the perching of sites. The small animals on transformer can also start with fire with the short circuit. This is when the bodies directly come with the transformer bushings. As per the mitigation, this includes the usage of the wildlife protection booting to prevent the birds from directly causing the short-circuiting. There have been conditions where there is a problem for the hardware, damaging of the insulators and the other weather or the bird poles. There are broken cross arms with the damaged poles with bent brackets which directly allow all the conductors for touching grounds with the line inspection procedures. The utilities and the agencies for the fire protection have been considered to be important that is responsible for the setup of the power lines. Considering the influence of flame on the forests, there are hazardous results where the fires of plasma are ionized chemically and thermally. There have been ranges of the lower concentrations of the negative ions where the negative charge is directly transferred by the free electron system. As per the analysis, the rate of ionization process increase the temperature with the generation rate that increases when there is an increase in the temperature. The flame setup is stretched through in between the electrodes under the AC conditions. The breakdown of the voltage of the plate to plate is mainly at the normalized atmospheric condition. There is a decrease in the electrical strength of air where there has been a significant influence of the smoke and the flames. The factors direct to the higher temperature that directly reduce the density of air. The electrical charges are generated in the fire with the significant influence of the smoking particles in the air. (Conedera et al., 2015). When compared to the room temperature, there have been reduced breakdown which is interpreted with the gas temperature:

Breakdown of voltage

Where Tr is the room temperature and p is the pressure of the gas.

When there is an increase in the temperature of the limited space, there are flames which do not need the entire electrode distance. For this, the influence of temperature is seen to be small with the major role played by the space charge. The electrical charge changes with the distribution between the electrodes. When there is a charge which increases with the non-uniformity, then there is a decrease in the breakdown voltage. As per the process described, the measures need to be analyzed with the hot rod.

For the mitigation, there is a need to focus on installing of UED with the ACR for SWER. The alternatives for the exposure to HV fuses with the inbuilt HV fuss and a covered conductor trial will help in the testing of steel conductor and ties. The testing of the steel conductors needs to be appropriate for the changed protection settings depending on weather and other nearby condition. The research is mainly in the enhanced location option with the significant impact on reducing the protection discrimination. (Sinha et al., 2015). The RAPS system has been set where the customers are completely disconnected from the other grids with the diesel generators for handling the lower networking reliability.

As per the practices, there is a need to focus on the following points to mitigate the risks of the fire breakdown. Some of them are through:

The SDG&E's Electric Standard Practice, which ultimately define all the procedures and the practices for the working of the power lines. The minimisation of the forest fire while at the time of ignition is through the personnel and the equipment. (Jiricka et al., 2016). This includes the dissemination which is based on the centralized fire risk information with the hold of the fire safety procedures. These are directed to the tailboard where there are meetings and the smoking along with the Fire Patrol guard to handle the fire risks conditions along with the project specific plan to save the forest from the high electrical transmission of fire. As per the analysis, there have been fire mitigations and the control tools with water supply treatment for carrying all the SDG&E vehicles. The Fire Coordinator works on the firework services with the primary contact for the questions about different fire plans along with the safety training.

Steps to reduce the impacts

The Red Flag Warning System is considered to be a joint effort between the agencies of fire that intent to handle the critical conditions of the fire weather to all the users and help the occupants of the forest areas to bring in immediate actions for the wildland related activities. With the Red Flag Warning, the SDG&E can take the steps of notification with the tripping lines which are not manually tested or through the remote measures. There have been patrolled through identified interruption and repairing. The Fire Patrol Guard has been handling the operations with the potential of causing the fire with no open burning permission or the extinguishing of fires. The removal activities entirely cease with the blasts that are completely discontinued along with grinding and the welding discontinuity. (Jiang et al., 2015). As per the analysis, the smoking is not seen to be permitted in the restricted areas except in the case of emergency in the forest areas.

For handling the higher transmission power line, the US Forest Service work on the Project Activity Levels where the system is set for the reduced risks place for the National Forest Land. The PAL system work on the activities which will handle the fire risks that entirely depend on the level of PAL or the fire hazards. The SDG&E has been following the performance where there is a need to focus on the different hotline services.

Considering the measure of the outage, there have been risks of the transmission with fire management. The utility of the fuel modifications is set under an expansion of fuel clearance with the tower footprints to rank the risks as high or very high. The reduced maintenance of the fuel intervals is considered with the fuel tower footprint, with reduced reduction and maintenance of the intervals between the towers. The major identification and prioritization of the forest fire risks are with recurring fuel modification treatments along with the established appropriate fire ranks. The design of the fuel changes is general to reduce the density of crown and set for certain stages which have the specific type of vegetation. With the structure of the fuel management mosaics, there are Border Zone for the implementation and maintenance. The system to handle the risks mitigation looks for the increased power line fire patrolling measures with an enormous amount of the weather periods. The system improvement is through maintenance of the strategic egress which is capable of handling the transport fire equipment. (Stephen et al., 1998). As per the collaboration, there is local fire system setup with the community organizations focusing on fire prevention education along with the outreach of different programs. For the clearance of the fuel, there are Electric Standard Practice Policy and Guide for Encroachment, which holds the ignition and fuel source in the transmission line range.

Mitigation techniques

The Management Program needs to work on extensive tree pruning and the removal program to handle the line clearance. This will help in treating all the non-exempting power poles based on specified ten food clearance with the land services, certain facilities, and the fire coordination work. The Department of Forestry has been aiming to optimize the cooperation and communication of the parties for handling the risks of the fire in the forest areas. This will help in building up a controlled fuel area with the removal of vegetation in the utility line of ROWs with the cleared control of plant.

As per the recommendations, there has been the R27 underground system which will help in reducing the bushfire risks. This is possible only through 22kV at the life of engineering. The R28 has been for the SWER lines and the 22kV for handling the risks with the bushfire. The R29 has been for modified procedures with the registered training of the organizations for the asset inspectors. As per the government response, R27 is not accepted, but R28 has the electrical safety with regulations that need a time of at least two years for inspection. The R29 has been for handling the controls which complete the training course programs that have been approved by ESV. The electricity distributors implement the Victorian Bushfires with the installation for the new protection of the devices with accurately detecting and turn off powers at the fault on the higher fire risks days in the forest. There is a need to focus on Electric Arc Testing the Fire Ignition, which can be reduced through the protection system with the reclosed time protection operations more than 24s. The major need is to handle the electricity distribution with minimizing the potential that directly affect the supply reliability of the customers. The Victoria Government should continue to the regular free communication programs with the reduced levels of the supply along with a higher fire risks days that direct for certain appropriate percussed along with taking care of a backup power plan supply with the reliable supply of electricity.

As per the Victoria Government, there needs to be an established task force for investigating all the technology with operational practices. This will help in holding the impacts related to costs, supply, landowners and the environment. The plans have been set to recommend about the bushfire risks with the timeframes by the Royal Commission. The advising on the options which will help in recovering all the costs of implementation. (Bevanger, 1995). The work that has been undertaken includes the research on fire ignition with a proper environmental scan of all the options along with fault tree analysis. The testing of energy needs to be from the electric arcs and the fire ignition power with consumer surveys about the costs, reliability and the safety trade-offs. This will help in handling the fault location technology.

Conclusions

To handle the issues faced by the customers, there is a need to work on the costs for the running of diesel generators in the forests with the safety along with fire risks factors. These cannot be used as welders or for the higher consumption of the electrical equipment. The primary strategy is to handle the removal of electricity grid from the ruralised areas. (Jiricka et al., 2016). The government response focuses on accepting the PBST recommendations with the change to network operations. The government needs to define the highest areas for the risks with the replacement for the insulated conductor. The government helps in providing the inputs for the consequence modeling along with the implementation of the replaced bare wire with an insulated conductor.

Reference

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