Lancelin
Our first Regional Connect pilot project is being undertaken in Lancelin.
At the end of May, we held a community drop-in session in the town to gain insight and better understand the community's felt experience, begin initial collaboration and gather possible suggestions for improvements.
How to get involved
As we continue to explore innovative long-term solutions for improved reliability, we're seeking expressions of interest from community members to join our Community Partnered Working Group, which will represent your community in two option exploration sessions alongside Western Power. If this sounds like something you would like to be a part of, please complete the expression of interest form by 21 July 2024. Selection will be based on ensuring a balance of the outlined criteria listed in the terms of reference.
Network challenges
Difficult environmental conditions
Humidity, high winds, salt and dust build up can create paths or ‘tracks’ on insulators, enabling electricity to jump across. This tracking electricity can heat elements of the pole infrastructure to a point where they smoulder and burn which can cause pole top fires and/or lead to protection equipment activating.
To ensure assets in extreme and high bushfire risk areas are managed safely during bushfire season, we modify the settings that monitor the network to make them more sensitive. These settings ensure power is interrupted faster in the event of a fault and will remain off instead of being automatically restored until a patrol is completed. This can result in more frequent outages that may last longer.
Long lines
Lancelin is a regional town at the end of a long feeder line from Regans Ford. This means power line assets over a widespread geographic area are exposed to storm, bushfire and vegetation related faults.
Due the location of Lancelin on the electricity network, the town is unable to be back-fed when there is a fault.
Proposed short term works
Proposed scope
We aim to deliver the below proposed short term works over the next 18 months. On completion of these works, we expect to see an improvement in restoration times following an unplanned outage.
| Type of work | |
|---|---|
| Installation of reclosers | 3 |
| Installation of new automated load break switches | 2 |
| Installation of new pole top switches | 11 |
| Installation of new transformer | 1 |
| Installation of new fuse saves | 3 |
| Installation of voltage regulator | 1 |
| relocation of existing load break switch | 1 |
High Voltage Injection Unit (HVIU)
To provide a level of assurance to the community, we’re proposing to install a High Voltage Injection Unit (HVIU) as a short-term solution for back-up supply for the Lancelin area.
A HVIU is a mobile substation that provides backup generation to a community in the event of an unplanned power outage.
The HVIU is connected to a number of generators to power a larger area than what would normally be possible when using a standard generator.
The generators are connected to existing network infrastructure delivering continued power supply during an extended outage.
Proposed HVIU location
