Prepare to Ensure Power Supply during the BFA Annual Conference

The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2016 will be opened on March 22. To ensure power supply in Hainan during the meeting, Hainan Grid Interconnection Project began to carry out annual maintenance on March 4. The maintenance applied the underwater robot “Sea Lion III”, active detection and other high-tech methods to explore and videotape topography and underwater obstacles along the cable routes, so as to provide a scientific basis for conducting corresponding protections. This is the largest and most influential maintenance since the system has been put into operation, which covers over 300 items such as comprehensive detection on 31km-long submarine cables.

According to marine information, conditions around the Qiongzhou Strait are severe. The current flows at 3 knots in varied directions and the seabed environment is complicated, not only bringing great challenges to the operation of “Sea lion III” but also higher requirements to on-site workers. To ensure on-time completion of maintenance, the CSG EHV Power Transmission Company formulated special maintenance scheme, and Haikou Branch of Guangzhou Bureau of the EHV also teamed up the “Sturgeon” Commando for submarine cable detection.

To ensure detection quality and safety of the submarine cables, the “Sturgeon” Commando worked for 24 hours uninterruptedly, organized Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute and underwater robotics experts to analyze daily detection report, and held regular trilateral coordination to sum up and discover risks and defects for timely adjustment and improvement of the detection. “The on-board detection is pretty hard. The greatest difficulties are seasickness, night shift and no signal. But we also learned a lot about underwater robot manipulation, active detection and other new technologies. Careful monitoring and timely detection of problems and adjustment also reflect the expertise of our submarine cable maintenance team.” said Zhang Weijia, member of the submarine maintenance team.

It is learned that this maintenance not only bears significance for guaranteeing power supply during the BFA Annual Conference, but also exerts remarkable influences on Hainan Province’s handling with summer electricity consumption peak, precautions against typhoon and deluge as well as nuclear power safety.