Category: Active Network Management
Grid Requirement tackled
- Traditionally, asset investment planning was heavily focused on the asset’s useful life, without considering different contexts or evolving conditions throughout its lifecycle. Asset maintenance was largely reactive or scheduled based on “blind” rules, primarily driven by time or usage, without real-time insights into actual performance.
- In the context of digital transformation, asset performance management initiatives hold significant potential to unlock greater efficiency and reliability. Moreover, with the growing integration of variable renewable energy sources and the increasing frequency of climate-related incidents, ensuring the resilience of the grid has become paramount.
Approach & solution
- Solution that resorts to rule-based advanced data analysis tools to optimize the management of distribution network assets. It involves the development of dedicated dashboards and advanced predictive models to determine fundamental indicators to plan and optimize investments and anticipate asset problems, allowing DSOs to act more proactively (TRL 7).
- The solution addresses the following needs of the DSO: 1) Calculate asset health index and probability of failure to support investment planning and maintenance activities; 2) Automate the assessment of the actual condition of critical assets; 3) Important input for risk calculation and simulation of long-term strategic scenarios.
- Investment on the solution is both CAPEX and OPEX based.
Benefits
- The solution drives benefits in the following areas:
- Technological/time/economical savings: Reduction in maintenance costs.
- Customers: Ensure continuity of supply.
- DSOs: Potential for improved operational efficiency, investment planning asset maintenance and infrastructure resilience.
- Timeline for deployment: The solution is in operation, and the focus in on determining key indicators (health, failure) for critical assets to optimize investment planning and asset maintenance. In the medium-term, the objective is to improve data quality and to expand the solution to other network assets at HV and MV level and to other functionalities.