In severe weather conditions when many fault interruptions are simultaneously ongoing in overhead line networks, control center operators are overworked because of heavily increased dispatching tasks. At the latest when outage statistics reveal that the first corrective switching actions repetitiously take too long, a new cost-effective distribution automation tool to pursue SAIDI reduction should be introduced. This paper presents the principles of a new control-center-based automation system (called FLIR) for rural medium voltage networks. A proof of concept is enclosed to provide an overview, key results and user experiences of the first implementation at Elenia Oy.

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Today's society is highly dependent on a reliable distribution of electricity. Since 2010 distribution system operators (DSOs) in Finland have faced several extreme weather-related major power disruptions each year. The most severe extreme weather events in the past few years has been storms Tapani and Hannu in December 2011 causing outages to 517 000 customers in Finland. The mitigation of impacts of weather-related major power disruptions requires a variety of development actions of which one of the most important is changing the network structure to underground cables. Although this is considered to be the most effective measure against adverse weather-related outages it also takes the longest period of time to implement. Therefore improvements in the utilisation of network automation, ICT-systems and the development of processes can result in significantly advantageous results in a very short term. This paper will focus on the process development initiatives concerning network control centre operations and a new model for fault repairing activities in the field to minimize the impacts of weather-related major power disruptions.