CIRED 20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution Prague, 8-11 June 2009

Paper 0119
ANALYSIS OF ICING ACCIDENT IN SOUTH CHINA POWER GRIDS IN 2008
AND IT’S COUNTERMEASURES

LI Tianyou1, 2 LI Juanjuan
1．Fujian Electric Power Co., Ltd., Fujian, Fuzhou 350003, China Xiamen Power Supply Bureau,
2．Business Administration Institute, North China Electric Fujian, Xiamen 361006, China
Power University, Beijing 102206, China E-mail：lijjuan@126.com
E-mail：ltyxm@163.net
Abstract: The South China suffered a serious icing railway traction station were seriously affected. Total
accident in the beginning of 2008, which caused a wide outage 884 35kV and above substations and 15,300 10kV
area destroyed on the power grid In this paper we used and above transmission lines, and 184,000 high-voltage
the first-hand data collected from the field in towers and 519,000 low-voltage poles were broken.
northwestern Fujian Province, analyzed the key factors Besides, data from the <Southern Power System
that caused such a serious accident. The analysis pointed Technology> showed sleet and frost had caused 7451
out that the disaster that hadn’t happened in 50 years 10kV and above power lines outage and 859 35kV and
before caused tht lines were covered by thick ice, it’s above substations outage in China Southern Power Grid
1
beyond the former design standards of devices which Corporation (CSG) , total 126247 10kV and above
didn’t consider such serious weather conditions, power towers and poles were destroyed by the end of
especially the snow-icing condition. Many lines and February 27th, 2008. It needed 39.0 billion RMB to
towers in large area were broken and fallen down. So, we rebuild and reconstruct. The loss would be greater if CSG
need to attach importance to the microclimate conditions and local power departments were involved. Take Fujian
and micro-geographical characteristics along the lines, power network as an example to analyze, low
to carry out differential design standards for such temperature with frozen rain, snow and icing was
different icing-zone, to suitable choose the route for continuing more than 10 days resulting in insulator drop,
power supply lines, to strengthen the routine inspection of wire breakage and tower failure, which caused the
the measures for combating the accidents and fighting distribution outage of Longyan, Sanming and Nanping in
with the natural calamities, etc... In addition, a guiding Northwestern Fujian Province. The lessons were
principle about strengthening the planning of power profound because of huge economic loss, wide area
sources and developing the distributed generation power failure (about 600,000 houses), long duration
sources and building LIFE CHANNEL for city grid had (almost 1 month) unavailable service and almost whole
been decided to put into practice, thus to strengthen the county outage of several counties. The damage
ability to withstand the influence caused by the natural classification of distribution and pole failure of each
calamities. voltage level in Fujian power network is separately
Keywords：icing accident，distribution network，tower shown in Table 1 and Figure 1.
failure，countermeasures Tabel.1. Distribution damage collecting table in
Fujian province in 2008
1. INTRODUCTION Earth Damage
Most parts of South China have had a heavy snow-cing Pole Wire wire lines
Voltage failure breakage Breakage Length
which haven’t happened in fifty years before. Strong cold （kV） （points） (points) (points) （km）
air intruded into Fujian Province on January 24th, 2008. 110 103 49 21 200.994

According to the reports from State Grid News on March 35 339 276 10 245.6

24th, 2008, as far as State Grid Corporation of China 10 16392 2987.78

0.4 18025 2599.3
alone, there were 545 counties (districts) and more than
Total 34867 325 31 6032.674
27 million users affected, among which 80 counties
(districts) almost lost all power supply, 15 electrified 1
China power network was divided into State Grid Corporation
of China and China Southern Power Grid Corporation

CIRED2009 Session 3 Paper No 0119

CIRED 20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution
Fig 1. Pole failure of each voltage level in Fujian province
2. ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN CAUSES OF
HUGE DAMAGE
2.1 The Damage Of A Large Number Of Power
Lines And Equipments As Result of Icing Accident
1) Thickness Of Ices Covering The Lines Greatly
Exceeded Design Standards
Fujian province locates north latitude between
23°31′and 28°18′, has a typical subtropical
climate. Mountains and hills with altitudes from 250m
to 1000m make up the vast majority of Fujian‘s territory.
It was raining in Northwestern Fujian province from
January 25th to February 1st followed frozen rain and
sleet. Pre and post icing accident, most weather
temperature in disaster area kept about 0℃. Lines in
disaster area were mostly situated windward slopes,
watershed, wind gap and hillside over 550m, thickness of
ices covering the lines commonly reached 40mm and the
worst even over 80mm (see Figure 2). Lines in Fujian
province are designed as withstanding ice of 10mm and
safety factor of 2.5. Therefore, lines, towers and other
equipments couldn’t reach the requirements of actual
anti-icing. Icing conductors and earth lines happened
upward-downward and forward-backward self-oscillation,
low frequent, large amplitude galloping under the wind
force. Adding unequalled icing, asynchronous ice melting
and deicing, all of these caused large scale conductors
and earth lines broken and pole and tower failure.
Fig 2. An 110kV central conductor icing scene
2) Unbalanced Line Stress Of The Icing Lines Caused
Wire Breakage And Tower Damage
Field survey showed that heavy-damaged lines had
characteristics of long span (even over 500m) and high
drop height. Covered by ice, the line sag became larger
which increased horizontal tension and vertical load of
lines. For instance, 110kV Hetai line’s span between
tower #18 and #19 is 814m. Tower #18 was located on
the top of a higher hill, while tower #19 was on the foot
of another hill, the drop height between two towers was
about 80m. Due to unbalanced tensile force, the top part
CIRED2009 Session 3
Prague, 8-11 June 2009
Paper 0119
of tower #18 was twisted leading to all of its conductors
falling off (see Figure 3). Further, the unendurable of the
icing weight caused the fell down of #19 tower. During
such situation, the domino effect occured in line
strain section making chain-type damage of
devices. That was the reason why many poles and
towers inclined or fell down in succession, and
this phenomenon happened in more places.
Fig 3. The situation of straight tower #18 of 110kV Hetai line
3) Icing Trees On The Sides Of The Corridor Were
Broken And Pressed On The Lines
Ice-coating trees like Mao Bamboo and Chinese Fir on
the sides of tower corridor in icing accident zone were
bent or broken and pressed on the lines, which made
lines burdening not only the icing strength but such
external force, caused the weaker tower or wire was
broken firstly. Such phenomena generally happened on
media or low voltage distribution lines.
2.2 It’s Hard To Eliminate Ice Covering On The
Distribution Lines And To Restore The Lines
Even if no pole failure and wire broken happened in
media or low voltage distribution, no ice melting
measures could be taken. The restoration carried out only
after ice and snow melted, thus it caused a long duration
of power interruption. It was a distinct feature for
distribution network that suffering from the icing
accident. The icing phenomena on a pole of distribution
line was shown in Figure 4.
Fig 4. The icing phenomena on a pole of distribution line
2.3 The Problems Existed On The Connection
Between The County Net And The Provincial Grid
The power tie-lines between the county net and
provincial grid broken was one of reasons why several
counties were almost whole county outage. Some
connections between them were single circuit or even
double circuits, but all of them were in the same situation
Paper No 0119
CIRED 20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution
suffering the same accident. Thus, reliable supply
couldn’t be ensured under such serious weather and
caused the absence of power sources.
2.4 The Problems Of Material Reserve Used In
Rush Repair
Lack of power equipments and materials reservesd for
rush repair, such as insulators, conductors, poles, etc was
exposed. Especially for power poles, tens of thousands
poles were needed at once and it wasn’t possible only to
rely on local dispatch. The outside province recourse had
to be taken, but it took much more time and the cost was
increased.
2.5 After Icing Accident, The Restoration Condition
Was So Bad That It Paid Great Efforts And Time To
Recover
Icing accident had passed, but it remained raining. The
line materials, such as the poles and accessories and even
the machines, couldn’t be delivered to the mountain area
by cars. So, a large number of people were dispatched
from different places to send them to the restoration site.
The great efforts were made and it prolonged the time for
restoration.
3. COUNTERMEASURE
With the global warming and continuous deterioration
of environment, some originally abnormal rare climates
arise in some areas. This icing accident exposed the
insufficiency of power network to withstand serious
natural disaster. It needs to take multi-measures to
actively prevent power network from icing accident to
efficiently reduce outage time.
3.1 Divide Icing-zone And Establish Icing-zone
Monitor And Warning
According to weather information over years combined
with current special situation of climate changing,
in-depth study of effects of meteorological condition on
power lines should be implemented. At the same time,
the collection of micro-meteorological data along the
lines and researches need to be strengthened to study
different micro-climatic conditions in different sections
and put forward and picture the probability distribution
of grid icing. In the snow disaster-prone areas,
monitoring stations of ice conditions should be
established to predict the probable thickness of ice
through the observation of ambient temperature, wind
CIRED2009 Session 3 Paper No 0119
Prague, 8-11 June 2009
Paper 0119
speed to provide the first-hand data for power grid
preventing from icing accident.
3.2 Take Differential Design Standards And
Appropriately Raise The Grid Planning Design
Standards In Special Areas
For the lines in the snow disaster-prone areas, their
design level of withstanding icing thickness should be
increased, it should be at least 15mm for the general area
and 40-50mm for partial heavy ice areas. The
fortification standards for power grid needs to raise, for
some distribution lines, the standards should be in
accordance with enduring strong ice and snow climate at
least in 30 years. For special, probably disaster
happening area, its design technical conditions should be
rationally improved on the basis of both reliability and
economy to cope with the possibility of happening
special meteorological disasters. The line routes being
planned and designed should avoid some landforms like
high-altitude, wind gap as far as possible. For high
altitude area (above 500m), the span must be strictly
controlled, recommending no more than 400m. At the
same time, strain towers should be adequately increased
to prevent the extension of incident. Finally, the
construction quality of grouting of tower foundation and
conductor sag should be grimly controlled as design
requirements.
3.3 Pay Great Attention To The Selection Of Line
Routing And Design Of District Backbone Network
For lines which supply the local backbone should avoid
in the areas such as icing-hit frequently, alp and air gap
where bring a lot of disadvantages of daily maintenance,
the accident rate of lines, rush repair and so on, and
forest area brings more resistance of clean-up passages
and is easier to cause large-scale tower falling down and
wire broken. In addition, if it’s inevitably for lines to be
located in bad condition areas, enhanced differential
design and rebuilding should be taken according to the
most atrocious weather to resist the worst natural
disaster.
It needs at least 2 lines from different routes as tie-lines
between county net and provincial grid. And the routes
should be along the traffic roads as possible as it can.
3.4 Attach Enough Importance To The Utilization
Of Distributed Generation
CIRED 20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution
It was local small hydroelectric units that let several
heavy disaster county-level power grids restore power
supply firstly during the accident, and then a dependent
power network was formed to supply the whole county
such as Jianning County, the city of Sanming. When two
tie lines between county and provincial power network
outage because of tower failure and wire breakage caused
the whole county power off, the county relayed on eight
small hydropower stations in the county to form a small
power network and restore power service lasting for one
month. The output of eight small hydropower stations
were shown in the figure.5, the smallest was 0.4MW, the
largest was 5MW. Therefore, distributed generation for
preventing a large scale outage has an irreplaceable effect.
We need to pay attention to the development and
construction of local distributed generation along with the
development of large-capacity power units.
Fig. 5. Jianning County’s grid wiring diagram during accident
3.5 Equip With Emergency Security Power Source
For some key departments and units, such as water
supply, media, finance, and government agencies and so
on, it needs to equip with emergency security sources or
plan as a whole to make sure to have a normal and safe
power network operating in the case of emergency.
3.6 Set Up LIFE CHANNEL For City Grid
To answer the disaster, it’s necessary to set up special
urban basic security power grid - LIFE CHANNEL for
city power grid to ensure power supply to social vital
parts, high-risk enterprises and important institutions for
combat against emergency. The basic configuration of
urban security network is underground cable network, so
CIRED2009 Session 3 Paper No 0119
Prague, 8-11 June 2009
Paper 0119
it needs to reconstruct power network for distribution
mixed overhead lines and cables.
3.7 Periodically Evaluate And Inspect The Ability
Of Preventing Disasters Of Power Network
It needs to have the expert team periodically evaluate
the ability of preventing emergencies or disasters of
power network. The evaluation includes disaster trends in
the region, the possible capability of the emergency
handling mechanism, annual network performance (such
as reliability, failure rate, etc), the equipped conditions of
local emergency security sources and power supply
devices for key users, the storage of disaster relief
materials and so on. Through evaluation and examination,
risks and major weaknesses are found, then the direction
and measures of enhancing the ability of power network
to prevent disasters in next phase can be made.
In addition, others such as cleaning up the line path,
strengthening the inspection and maintenance of lines,
studying ice-melting technology for media and low
voltage distribution , replacing the overhead lines of some
major users with underground cables are also the
measures promoted against disasters.
4. CONCLUSION
Global abnormal weather frequently happened, natural
disasters such as icing disaster, earthquake, flood disaster,
etc. continued to occur, all of which challenged the ability
of grids to resist disasters. Some countermeasures were
suggested by using the first-hand data collected from the
icing field and analyzing from the technical views,
including the establishment of monitoring station for the
icing-zone, adoption of differential design standards for
the lines, the selection of the line routing and design of
backbone network, development of distributed generation
and construction of LIFE CHANNEL for urban network.
Of course, it’s a systematic project to strengthen and
improve the ability of anti-disaster of power grid, which
not only involves power system planning, construction
and management, but the social emergency handling
capability and other issues. It needs continuous
exploration and improvement in practice.