Wednesday 24 October 2018

Is Northern Powergrid’s new eco-paint a stroke of genius?

Northern Powergrid has announced it has developed a new water-based paint it claims is better for the environment and local air quality.

The distribution network operator (DNO), which uses thousands of gallons of paint each year to protect its network assets, says the paint replaces the need for polluting white spirit-based paints and can dry in less than an hour, reducing the time it takes to take a transformer off the grid from two days to less than one,

It also needs a much thinner coat to protect an asset, reducing raw materials by up to a third.

The company teamed up with Rosh Engineering to successfully apply the new formula paint to a large power transformer in Darlington, which it says performed well over a three-month period.

Northern Powergrid services eight million customers across 3.9 million homes and businesses in the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire.

Geoff Earl, Northern Powergrid’s Director of Safety, Health and Environment, said: "It’s early days for assessing the long-term benefits of the paint but we anticipate this could have measurable effect on the life of our transformers – leading to a positive impact for both the environment in terms of materials use and our customers as we reduce system security risks during maintenance work and speed up work programmes to protect the assets that power their everyday life."