Fire Prevention and Protection

Fire can be a major safety hazard in electrical installations and you must know the safety procedures in case of a fire breaking out or to avoid fire. Every substation should train its employees in fire fighting. It should form its own fire fighting team. Teams should be provident frequent mock drills. The duty of every member of the fire fighting team should be written and circulated between the staff. A list of all employees along with their contact numbers and home addresses should be displayed within the substation.

First and foremost, you should be aware of the factors that feed fire so in which you can avoid it through eliminating them. This is the primary principle of firefighting.

Then, you should know certain common guidelines for preventing fire in your workplace that should be followed at the organizational level.

General Guidelines for Preventing Fire

1. Eliminate potential sources of fire.

2. Select adequately rated equipments for normal and abnormal duties.

3. Install, operate and maintain the equipment within the limit of design.

4. Prevent Hot Spots: Overloading should not be done as it causes insulation failure and fire. Heat detector alarm system and protective relay should be used to alert and disconnect equipment before preset temperature is reached due to overload.

5. Adopt arrangements necessary to limit the spread of fire as well as its control.

6. All oil filled equipment such as transformers and switchgears should be located outdoors. Indoor transformers and switchgears should be dry type.

7. In a substation, switchgears and transformers should be remaining in separate areas. Auxiliary room, Battery room and Control room should be separate and situated away from major power equipments.

Two exits should be given in the rooms whereas operating personnel work.

8. It is a statutory requirement in which the company's and consumers' switch gears should be separated through fire proof wall.