Russian shelling damages substations and power lines near Zaporizhzhia

What happened

Russian attacks damaged substations and overhead and underground power lines in Zaporizhzhia city and in frontline areas of Zaporizhzhia oblast, Ukraine. According to the regional electricity company, which announced the damage on its Telegram channel and was reported by Ukrinform, crews on the Saturday morning had to restore two transformer substations at the impact sites, one of which had to be rebuilt from scratch. Three faults were confirmed on overhead and cable lines.

Power to several sites was also cut at the request of the State Emergency Service to support rescue work. At Orikhiv district a drone struck a substation, and no staff were injured. Another drone became entangled in power lines, leaving 452 customers without power, which was restored. Repeat damage in Kushuhum community, reported later, left more than 3,600 households without power in Balabyne and Kushuhum, with repairs to begin once attack-free windows were available. Over the weekend more than 9,600 customers were restored after earlier shelling outages.

Contributing factors

Ongoing shelling and drone attacks on the area, including guided aerial bombs used against Zaporizhzhia city, which damaged housing and equipment. Repair work was limited by the security situation and by the need for attack-free periods before crews could work.

Lessons learned

1. Operators in conflict-affected areas should pre-position mobile or spare substation equipment so that a destroyed transformer station can be replaced without a full rebuild.
2. Repair crews need a safe-access plan, including agreed windows in which work can proceed, with emergency services able to request temporary isolation of supplies.
3. Network design should allow supply to be re-routed around damaged lines and substations so that fewer customers lose power while repairs are under way.

More lessons on maintenance, inspection and ageing assets, electrical protection and isolation, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.

Source

mezha.net