Electricity and Control August 2025

Plant maintenance, test + measurement

Monitoring infrastructure in remote environments

For power grids, water supply networks and many industrial facilities, managing infrastructure in remote locations is a significant challenge as it is almost impossible to maintain regular in-person oversight. The solution lies in remote monitoring, but it is important that any instrumentation used for this is right for the environment in which it is deployed. Gary Bradshaw, Director of Omniflex, outlines the requirements for monitoring equipment to be used in remote and harsh environments and shares the example of work done with South African electricity supply company, Eskom.

R emote locations present particular challenges for monitoring equipment for several reasons. First, the equipment is o“en exposed to harsh environments: high heat levels, moisture, dust and electrical storms, all of which can damage electrical equipment. This is made worse where maintenance capabilities are limited, and getting a technician to site to check the equipment is logistically challenging because of the locations, time and costs involved. Furthermore, there is o“en no access to mains electricity in these environments, so systems typically run on batteries or, where possible, solar power. This means energy management must be considered to maintain system availability, and replacement batteries should be stocked so batteries can be replaced before outages cause downtime. Maintaining reliable data links and system connectivity is especially

Maxiflex pole-mounted RTUs are interfaced to a central control room, to enable remote monitoring and resets when necessary.

o“en at night and in treacherous conditions, to investigate faults and manually reset devices. Fault reporting was o“en delayed too, as many of the regions had poor telecommunications infrastructure. To overcome these challenges, Eskom engaged Omniflex to provide it with remote monitoring instrumentation that could be used to monitor installations from a centralised control room 24/7. Omniflex provided a solution in the form of pole-mounted Maxiflex remote terminal units (RTUs). Maxiflex is a modular product that can be configured to suit a wide range of applications, and its hot-swappable I/O modules enable maintenance without powering down the system, minimising any associated downtime. The Maxiflex pole-mounted RTUs were mounted directly on power line poles alongside switching devices and interfaced to a control centre over unlicensed radio bands for secure 24/7 monitoring. This solution allowed operators to receive real-time fault alerts and enabled them to isolate line sections or reset devices remotely, without dispatching engineers. The Eskom project was one of the first projects where the Maxiflex product was deployed and, since then, it has been used across critical infrastructure applications worldwide. These range from radiation monitoring at most UK nuclear sites to utility metering, real-time sequence of events monitoring and alarm annunciation projects in industries including nuclear, petrochemical, and oil and gas.

challenging. Cellular network signals are o“en unavailable in remote locations and accessing them using traditional wired infrastructure is generally impractical due to the prohibitive installation costs. The only viable options in these scenarios are radio and satellite. Underlying all these obstacles is a broader challenge of system longevity. Many industrial monitoring products come with a built in obsolescence cycle that forces system replacements every decade, sometimes sooner. For installations in remote and dangerous locations, this is not always practical as sending engineers out to replace equipment on a regular basis raises the same cost and risk challenges as in-person monitoring and maintenance. For these installations, remote monitoring equipment should ideally maintain full serviceability and compatibility for decades, to minimise the need to dispatch engineers and technicians to the site. Pole-mounted RTUs for Eskom In the early 1990s, South African electricity utiliity Eskom was struggling to cope with the challenges of managing remote installations, such as 11 kV and 22 kV distribution lines running through some of the country’s most remote terrain. During storms, lightning strikes and falling tree branches regularly tripped the lines auto-reclosers and sectionalisers, causing service outages. Restoring service required engineers to travel long distances,

For more information visit: www.omniflex.com

AUGUST 2025 Electricity + Control

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