Neoenergia advances once again in the innovation and safety of its assets' operation. This time, the novelty comes to the Itapebi Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) located on the Jequitinhonha river, on the border between the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais, where equipment such as radar and intelligent analytics have been installed. The main objective is to provide improvements in the plant's corporate safety, resulting in benefits for the operation of the hydroelectric plant and for the surrounding community.
The investment includes the installation of a radar positioned at the plant's spillway - where the flow of the surplus water takes place. The equipment monitors everything within a radius of 1 km, which allows the detection of situations that could compromise the safety of the operation and also the population. The equipment makes it possible to observe, for example, the movement of boats in relation to the plant and activities that are being carried out in the water. In this way, accidents in the community living in the region can be avoided and, at the same time, the operation of the project can be protected.
"Mitigating the risks related to corporate security in hydroelectric power plants is a great challenge, especially when we consider their vast territorial extension, the difficult access environments, and the high complexity for the passage of infrastructure in certain areas of the plant", says Neoenergia's Corporate Security supervisor, Jorge Machado Gouveia
The radar is integrated to a camera, which allows continuous monitoring in the plant, besides the integration with the NSC - Neoenergia Security Center. The space, which is being implemented in Salvador (BA), already provides operational coverage for Itapebi and will be inaugurated still in 2021. In the case of interferences, the Center does all the follow-up and acts for the necessary interventions, when necessary.
"The technology has intelligent analytics that allow event capture, report generation, alarm configuration, and image zooming. All integrated into the corporate safety management platform, which centralizes access control with video surveillance and megaphones. In this case, when a person goes beyond the plant's safety area, it is possible to give a voice command remotely through the use of megaphones, which generates a prompt response and saves time for action", says Neoenergia's Corporate Safety officer, Manuel Martinez Rodrigues.
The installation of the radar with the integrated system also represents an environmental benefit, since, until now, monitoring required the installation of large infrastructures that needed to be built in the middle of the vegetation, with poles, pipes, and wires. "With the radar, all of this was eliminated, besides having a centralized management system, which reinforces the quality of the operation and safety", concludes Manuel.