The fire at the Hyde North substation near Heathrow Airport on March 21,2025 forced Europe’s busiest travel hub to close for nearly a full day, dashing the holiday plans of travelers and scrambling flights across the world. This was another in a series of wake-up calls to the worlds aging infrastructure and it prompted questions about Britain’s infrastructure and how we can stop these occurrences from happening in the future.
A Lesson from Malaysia on how the UK can avert another “Heathrow-Incident”
It was almost three years prior to the Heathrow incident that a similar occurrence took place in Malaysia but this was barely noticed outside the ASEAN countries. It was the middle of a workday on Wednesday, July 27, 2022, at 12:39pm when the Yong Peng, Johor, Malaysia 275KV substation suffered an arc blast that resulted in a fire that caused widespread havoc throughout many parts of the Malaysian Peninsula. ATMs, tollways, airports, trains, traffic lights, border crossings, hospitals, businesses and homes were affected throughout the nation. Between 300,000 and 450,000 people cross the Malaysia-Singapore border daily, primarily through the Johor-Singapore Causeway. This makes it one of the busiest land border crossings globally. It would be almost 3 hours before the power was fully restored. In the meantime, much of the country was in a pause, and people were stranded on both sides of the border in a queue that would ultimately take many hours to diminish even after power was restored.
Fortunately for the people of Malaysia, national utility company Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) had already been looking for a way to protect themselves from such an event and had met with outside consultants who had suggested fixed infrared cameras as a way to move to a condition-based maintenance program and replace the outdated calendar-based maintenance program still in use throughout most of the world’s grids. Advances in infrared cameras are revolutionizing the way substation maintenance is being managed.
The Yong Peng outage was the final straw that pushed them to finalize their designs.
The Hidden Risk: Gaps Between Inspections
Hand-held thermography cameras have been in use in substations for years to inspect electronic components for the anomalies that lead to shutdowns. Their use is codified in the US under NFPA 70B. These checks are typically carried out at three-to-six-month intervals. Unfortunately, it is the gap between these inspections where issues oftentimes arise. As the components in our grids age and the demand for energy increase, we will see the wear and tear appear more frequently. We often miss the critical moments where damaged insulation, loose or incorrectly wired control connections lead to arcing or heat, triggering an arc blast. Damaged enclosures, operating mechanisms and cable/bus supports also raise the risk of an arc event if not caught in a timely manner.
The best way to avoid these inspection gaps is to move to full-time thermal monitoring by employing bi-spectral mounted PTZ thermal cameras with specialized reporting software like those employed in the SYTIS GridSafe™ system. These cameras run day and night and, when paired with the proper software, send email alerts in real-time, at the earliest stage before issues become catastrophic.
How Southern California Edison and SYTIS Made It Happen
Southern California Edison has a simple, cost-effective way to protect their substations from arc events using a product they developed with camera/software manufacturer, SYTIS. The SYTIS and SCE teams worked hand in hand over several years to develop this ideal system that ultimately became known as the SYTIS GridSafe™. Now deployed in many SCE substations, SYTIS has proven the competence and historical background to build the best, fine-tuned, condition-based IR camera monitoring system and put it in place quickly. The GridSafe™ has recently been chosen to protect a critical substation of the 2026 World Cup in Los Angeles and the 2028 LA Olympics. The SYTIS InfraSpec™ Software was developed to work alongside the camera system firmware to instantly email alerts and warnings to operators with actionable data.
GridSafe™ Skid installation at a Southern CA Edison Substation
TNB and Calibr8 Join Forces with SYTIS
So, when TNB’s partner and software company, Calibr8 Systems, Inc. out of Mannila, Philippines was asked to find an IR camera/software provider with a proven track record to fulfill this plan, they came to SYTIS. SYTIS is Calibr8’s preferred partner globally.
Another important request from the TNB team was that the live stream of the cameras be integrated into TNB’s existing AVEVA PI System. Since Calibr8 is the only PI integrator with the ability to do this live-stream integration, it was not a problem.
Over twenty days in January 2025, TNB, engineering company Simpro, Calibr8 and SYTIS installed the first Malaysian pilot program at the very substation responsible for the blackout in 2022.
Just a portion of the camera systems getting wired up ahead of installation at Yong Peng Substation, Johor, Malaysia.
The program is now up and running well and there are many eyes in SE Asia on this project as it is expected to provide the very security the world is looking for. As more stress is added daily to the world’s grids, traditional ways of maintenance will no longer do the job.
Conclusion: The Future of Grid Maintenance
The advances in infrared camera technology and accompanying software are coming at the right time. The grid is aging and demands on it are being pushed to the limit by data centers, electric vehicles and other electricity-dependent technologies. It’s time for utility companies to move away from traditional methods that can no longer support the needs of the future.
SYTIS is dedicated to supporting efforts to help both modernize and protect the global electrical grid with the motto:
SYTIS - We Gird the Grid
Get in touch with a SYTIS expert today if you're interested in leveling up your maintenance standards.
References:
Nierenberg, Amelia, and Michael D Shear. “Heathrow Was Warned of Power Supply
Vulnerabilities, Airlines Advocate Says.” Nytimes.com, The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2025, www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/world/europe/heathrow-airport-power-outage-substation.html. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025.
“Power Fully Restored to All Regions of Malaysia Hit by Blackouts.” The Straits Times, 27
July 2022, www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/blackouts-reported-in-malaysias-klang-valley-and-beyond. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025.