POWERGRID : Maintenance Mgmt System

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Power Grid Corporation of India is one of the largest transmission utility companies in the world. It owns and operates 58,000 circuit kms of transmission lines of voltages ranging from 66 kV to 765 kV AC (765 kV system in operation at 400 kV) and 500 kV HVDC and 105 substations with transformation capacity of approx. 58,000 MVA. Maintaining these huge network of transmission lines, sub-stations, and associated systems was a mammoth task for POWERGRID. Moreover the company was facing pressures from the regulators to maintain a high availability and low number of trippings. Earlier planning for maintenance, manpower, inventory, spare required great coordination among 250 maintenance offices of POWERGRID across India.
With the manual system there was no central databank available, information was scattered which led to weak planning. Also it was difficult for POWERGRID to do an organization-wide trend analysis of equipment performance.

To solve these issues POWERGRID developed Maintenance Management System (MMS) which is a web-based decision support system that connects the entire operations and maintenance team of the company across the country. For this project POWERGRID has used Share Point Portal technology and the portal is populated with complete maintenance and inventory-related information which can be accessed from any location. The portal has a master and a sub-site for every region. For data entry, the portal has predesigned standardized user friendly entry forms for every location. As soon as maintenance of a equipment is done, employees are required to submit a report on this portal. All maintenance schedules for Transmission Lines and Substations are maintained on the portal as well. The portal also issues alert as soon as maintenance of an equipment is due. The portal has also provided POWERGRID a collaborative platform where employee from various locations can share their experiences and help others. Moreover the portal serves as an organized knowledge base for the employees of the POWERGRID.

Kumud Wadhwa Ch Manager IT

History of previous maintenance done and results of test performed are also made available on the portal. After implementation of this project POWERGRID is experiencing significant reduction in downtime and enhanced inventory management. Also the portal has proved to be an effective decision support system and the company is able to make efficient new purchases.

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