COMMUNICATIONS
Our Communications Team has extensive experience in handling communication systems for High Voltage (HV) systems in New Zealand.
They are uniquely qualified to meet our clients’ needs and work closely with Niko’s protection engineering experts and substation designers.
Our team actively participates in the Australasian CIGRE D2 Panel, which focuses on Information Systems and Telecommunications, and collaborates with international working groups to produce technical publications.
Members of our team hold Government-endorsed “Approved Radio Certifier” status, allowing us to directly licence radio links.
Our ongoing engagements include writing/updating client standards.
Our team’s skills cover many areas, including:
OUR LATEST PROJECT
Reviewing essential DC supplies
An essential requirement at a modern substation is a high-availability DC supply for protection and communications devices. This supply needs to support critical services over lengthy periods during a failure of the local AC supply, supporting remote control and allowing rapid restoration of network services when ready.
We were engaged by a client with a large number of substations to review their communications power supplies for compliance with their recently updated black-start expectations.
The review parameters also included how close the batteries were to end-of-life, and which models of charger were no longer supported. Seismic restraint design to allow the DC supply system to survive earthquakes were assessed and reported on too.
The review was carried out by our Communications Team, as they have extensive experience preparing design and maintenance standards for communications DC supplies and have developed in-house software tools for calculating battery and charger capacity requirements.
The review project has been spread over two years to allow the recommended upgrades at a large number of sites to be slotted into business planning.
For further information, contact our specialist engineer Garry Rodgers at: garry.rodgers@niko.nz
