Workers’ exposure to electric fields during the task ‘maintenance of an operating device of circuit breaker from a service platform’ at 110-kV substations

Abstract

The objective of the study was to investigate occupational exposure to electric fields during the task ‘maintenance of an operating device of circuit breaker from a service platform’ at 110-kV substations. The aim was also to compare the results to Directive 2013/35/EU. At 16 substations, 255 electric field measurements were performed. The highest mean value of the electric fields was 9.6 kV⋅m⁻¹. At 63% of substations the maximum values were over 10.0 kV⋅m⁻¹, and at 31% of the substations the 75th percentiles were over 10.0 kV⋅m⁻¹, which is the low action level (AL) according to Directive 2013/35/EU. All measured values were below the high AL (20.0 kV⋅m⁻¹). In the future, it is important to take into account that the measurements were only taken at Finnish 110-kV substations; therefore, it is not possible to generalize these results to other countries and different types of substations.

Keywords:

• electric field
• exposure
• measurements
• electrical workers
• physical agents directive

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Jarmo Elovaara and Timo Heiskanen (Fingrid Oyj) for their advice on studying and analyzing the work tasks and to Fingrid Oyj for their collaboration in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Leena Korpinen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1807-9717