Applying new technologies
Since April 2021, thanks to the vigorous application of modern technologies, EVN's 5 large hydropower plants including Son La, Hoa Binh, Lai Chau, Huoi Quang, and Ban Chat have been centrally controlled in the Construction Safety Control Center (under Son La Hydropower Company).
Hydropower projects on the Da River cascade monitored remotely at Construction Safety Control Center
Specifically, the power plants have been fully equipped with main monitoring equipment to ensure full monitoring of construction safety status such as Monitoring displacement, seepage and hydrostatic pressure, and construction temperature; hydrometeorological and earthquake monitoring; etc Currently, five power plants have been installed over 2,798 modern sensors/equipment from countries around the world. All equipment is connected to and has data acquired through software for monitoring, data acquisition, storage, and analysis. Typically, they are connected to and collected data to the automatic monitoring system (ADAS) with a collection frequency of 1 hour/time using Loggernet/Multilogger software. Monitoring and controlling data using Online Vista Data Vision (VDV) software with real-time features, automatically sending warnings about signal loss, monitoring values exceeding designed calculation limits, and automatically reporting to dam owners and dam operators who oversee dam safety. Applying construction seismic monitoring software such as Scream, Reftek, GeoDAS; Software for analysis and assessment of construction safety and stability such as Ansys, Surfer, Picnet, etc.
In addition, hydropower plants have adopted drones to inspect projects and create terrain maps; applying underwater camera equipment and borehole cameras to monitor and inspect flooded hydraulic work items, inspect and monitor boreholes to drain water from the dam body; piloting BIM (building information modeling) in dam operation management; studying and applying robots to check equipment status at hydropower projects. At the same time, building a shared database to update and digitize design and as-built documents of projects to ensure information safety and security; creating initiatives for power plants in collecting hydrometeorological data, calculating and forecasting water inflows, forecasting the increase in reservoir water level, and planning for reservoir operation for power plants on the Da River cascade, etc.
Improving forecast quality and labor productivity
Hydropower experts visit and learn from experience at Construction Safety Control Center
Technologies have enabled managers and operators to calculate, analyze, and evaluate construction safety and stability through building digital reports and automatically updating data, reducing implementation time and labor, and reducing errors caused by doing manually. Digitization of a shared database for scientific and synchronized storage for power plants such as design, as-built documents, operation, and maintenance records to serve the monitoring and assessment of project safety, bringing convenience for the document search, etc.
Drone technology has enabled power plants to proactively inspect construction works, especially the scope of construction protection corridors and reservoir protection corridors to promptly detect encroachments, etc. Furthermore, this technology also helps reduce labor and field inspection time, and quickly update information to propose solutions to ensure project safety and security, especially for key projects related to national security. Application of underwater cameras, borehole cameras, etc. have helped power plants proactively inspect submerged construction items/hard-to-reach locations to serve survey work to make field records, and technical plans, saving cost for not engaging consulting units.
From the resulting effects, currently, Son La Hydropower Company has been assigned by EVN to survey the Ialy and Sesan 4 Hydropower projects to connect to the Construction Safety Control Center, aiming for a future goal of remotely managing and monitoring large hydropower projects across the country.