New substation in Neukölln connects to the grid

18.09.2014

The first of around 26,000 home and business customers in the Britz area will, as of now, start to receive their electricity supply from the newly constructed substation at Buckower Damm.

The first of around 26,000 home and business customers in the Britz area will, as of now, start to receive their electricity supply from the newly constructed substation at Buckower Damm. In the presence of representatives from the Neukölln area, members of parliament, customers, interested residents and employees of the companies involved in its construction, Stromnetz Berlin GmbH celebrated the launch of the EUR 28 million grid facility. "Berlin is growing, including here in Neukölln. This increases the demand for energy. You can see that in our investments: the new substation in Britz is, after Köpenick, already the second newly-built facility that we've incorporated into the grid this year," says Dr Helmar Rendez, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Stromnetz Berlin GmbH.

Thanks to remote management of the substation from the central grid control centre, the electricity supply can be redirected to a different route extremely quickly in an emergency, and the supply restored. The ring-shaped structure of Berlin's electricity distribution grid makes this possible: this means that Neukölln's new substation is supplied on both sides by the Rudow network node, which is connected to the 110 kV transportation network.

The Buckower Damm substation is replacing the old 1960s Britz substation on the same site. This means replacing the 30 kV and 6 kV voltage levels in southern Berlin. By reducing the number of plants and concentrating down to just three voltage levels (110 kV, 10 kV and 0.4 kV), Berlin's distribution system operator can run the grid more efficiently. The process of replacing the previous substation will take around one year. This is how long it takes to switch individual groups of customers over to the new station in stages.

At the same time, launching the new plant represents the first use of a new, modern management system with applications for our customers. The network in Britz is the first to use the e*Nergy pager radio system. e*Nergy is a trailblazer in radio-based management technology for distribution system operators and builds on the radio system already in existence. All components, including receiver modules, the control system and software are new developments, designed and produced in collaboration with Berlin-based project partners like Bosch Software Innovations and e*Message. The new technology is particularly compact and considerably better value than previous comparable solutions. e*Nergy meets extremely high safety standards and can reach all households in Berlin thanks to its extremely high-performing transmission infrastructure.