Monitoring Crucial Environmental Conditions in Hard-To-Reach Locations for EDF

Background

Électricité de France S.A. (EDF) is a French electric utility company, largely owned by the French state. As a global leader in low-carbon energy, the EDF Group covers every sector of expertise, from generation to trading and transmission grids.

Corsica, being located 170 km from the coast of France, is part of the non-interconnected island areas of the French metropolitan electricity grid, making the electricity system of Corsica unique. Being electrically isolated, the island has to produce the electricity it consumes. 96% of all the energy produced in Corsica is provided by EDF Corse.

Challenge

EDF Corse owns and operates a large number of substations, typically located on high points to avoid flooding and passer-by intrusion. Although, in Corsica, also called ‘the mountains in the sea’, the location of substations on high points is more out of necessity. Generally, these substations are unattended, relying on a control system for remote supervision. Furthermore, since the roads in Corsica don’t allow for fast transportation, the substations are poorly accessible.

EDF Corse needed to find a solution to be able to supervise the crucial switching, protection and control equipment, typically present in these isolated substations and act fast if needed. Furthermore, they also wanted the implementation of some sort of monitoring tool to view the status on different conditions, like temperature and humidity, inside the substations.