The important technical brochure published by CIGRE supports best practices and approaches to busbar design specifications while focusing on component quality and reliability
01/08/2025 EDINBURGH, UK TSX, NYSE: STN
Sadiq Siddiqui, a technical director at Stantec—a global leader in sustainable design, architecture, and environmental consulting—has coauthored new guidance around the design and quality of electrical substation busbars and their components.
The technical brochure (TB 930) is aimed at utilities operators, manufacturers, and the wider global energy sector, and was produced by a technical committee working for the International Council on Large Electric Systems (CIGRE). It serves as an important review of substation component reliability and is the foremost technical resource in this area. Siddiqui was part of the CIGRE working panel tasked with its creation.
Substation equipment is usually connected directly onto busbars, which transport and distribute energy as needed to support to the overall efficiency of wider systems. However, the failure of only one connector in a busbar system can disrupt the energy supply of a whole substation or local network.
While overhead power line fittings have benefitted from extensive attention from the energy industry in the form of technical brochures, articles, and reports, the same cannot be said about busbar systems.
Increasing global market competition and differing manufacturing methods are leading to varying qualities of busbar components. This, coupled with a lack of international standards, testing processes, and understanding of the component lifespan, has resulted in an urgent need for new guidance.
CIGRE TB 930 is available from the CIGRE website. It provides comprehensive guidance around designing, installing, and testing of connectors for rigid and flexible busbars, as well as dealing with reliability and manufacturing quality challenges.
TB 930 considers the impact of component quality over the lifetime of air-insulated busbar systems, including connectors, tubular and flexible busbars, insulators and conductors and their impact on the overall reliability and availability of a switchyard.
It also explains the physics of electrical contacts and degradation mechanisms while defining key requirements that are important in maintaining availability of air-insulated substations.
“This publication follows six years of deep collaboration by international leaders in substation design, operation, and maintenance,” said Siddiqui.
“This has been an excellent opportunity to work alongside other substation experts and prominent busbar clamp manufacturers to create best practice guidance that will help utilities operators around the world protect their assets.”
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Stantec empowers clients, people, and communities to rise to the world’s greatest challenges at a time when the world faces more unprecedented concerns than ever before.
We are a global leader in sustainable architecture, engineering, and environmental consulting. Our professionals deliver the expertise, technology, and innovation communities need to manage aging infrastructure, demographic and population changes, the energy transition, and more.
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