Java West Operations Telecommunications Network
Java, Indonesia
Winner of a Gold Award of Excellence - Association of Consulting Engineers' New Zealand
PLN, the state owned electricity utility of Indonesia installed a modern and sophisticated telecommunications network to service the power system in Java. The network (JWOTS for Java West Operations Telecommunications Network), uses 1263 km of fibre optic cable which was installed mainly on PLN's 150 kV steel tower transmission lines. The ADSS (All Dielectric Self Supporting) fibre optic cable used was manufactured totally from insulating material and it was the first time in the world that this type of cable had been installed on a major project.
The fibre optic cable was installed with the transmission lines "live" in order to avoid outages for the electricity consumers in Java. The development of safe working procedures in this environment was a priority and the project was completed without lost time injury to the staff working in the towers.
The rapid pace of change in Indonesia presented a challenge for the completion of the project on time and within budget. The project commenced in February 1992 with final commissioning on schedule during June 1995. During these 3 years, the rate of growth of PLN's generation and transmission capacity reached 15% per annum. The transmission network carrying the cable was being upgraded, new sites were added and some of the sites initially included were abandoned. It was important to keep a constant focus on the objectives of the project and the role of the consultant was to find solutions to problems caused by the changes, which provided better performance, at lower cost, and which did not delay completion. Adoption of improved technology was generally the route to achieving these conflicting objectives.
In addition to the fibre optic cables the telecommunications network included, optical transmission equipment and interfaces to telephone equipment, control equipment and a computer network. It also included telephone exchanges and video conference centres. The network will be used for the operation and control of the interconnected power system in Java. Besides providing for the immediate requirements of PLN, it includes spare capacity to cater for the substantial growth of this power system over the next 20 years.
Maunsell (working previously as Worley International) developed novel computerised design and documentation tools to assist PLN in the planning, design and implementation of these future additions. Given the magnitude of the required additions and the limited resources of PLN, it would have been impossible to manage this work using the traditional design and documentation structures. The tools developed by Mausnsell have been used successfully by PLN in the years since project completion. There has been considerable improvement in the accuracy of the record keeping and the design for the additions has been achieved at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods. These tools have assured the ongoing success of the project.
