Oleksii Degtyarev: What are scheduled maintenances and how to learn about causes of an outage
DTEK Donetsk Grids systematically does overhaul and routine repairs of power grids and power equipment, clears power lines. Why are such scheduled maintenances needed, why do the company cuts the power during them, and how to find out about this in advance? Oleksii Degtyarev, General Director for DTEK Donetsk Grids, talked about this during a virtual meeting within the #AskAboutTheLight project, answering questions from residents.
Electrical networks are one of the most important components of the infrastructure. The length of the Donetsk region networks is more than 31,000 km. This is almost 2/3 of the length of the national road network, which is 52,000 km. The company needs to diagnose and upgrade power facilities regularly. To this end, they systematically do the routine maintenances to avoid potential faults and ensure uninterrupted power supply in the customers' home.
“DTEK hears and understands the needs of customers. We do routine maintenances of the power grids so that they are reliable and efficient. In 2021, DTEK Donetsk Grids will repair 510 kilometers of power transmission lines, 464 6-10 kV transformer substations and 193 35-110 kV substations. Thanks to these maintenances, there will be fewer faults. Hence, the power supply of our customers will be more reliable,” says Oleksii Degtyarev, General Director for DTEK Donetsk Grids.
DTEK Donetsk Grids detects potentially problem areas and include them in the replacement, repair, and maintenance plan to avoid equipment failures. During such maintenances, the power supply is turned off. This is called a scheduled outage. The company does this to ensure that people who are doing the high-risk job there are safe. DTEK Donetsk Grids takes care of life and health of its employees.
So that power supply interruptions do not come as a surprise, DTEK Donetsk Grids includes such maintenances in the outage plan and always post information on the company's website. You can learn about scheduled outages and check if your address is the list in the Scheduled outages section. If your address is not there, that means that there was a blackout.
Moreover, you can learn about planned outages and report an outage using a Viber or Telegram chatbot, DM on the DTEK Donetsk Grids Facebook page, as well as by calling the call center +38 (093/096/099) 450 0 473, (0629) 450 473.
The schedule indicates the maximum time required for recovery. But the teams try to get the work done as soon as possible.
The full recording of the #AskAboutTheLight live stream can be found here.