The Automobile Association recently reported that the average Auckland motorway commuter lost 85 hours to congestion in 2018. In an effort to reduce the travel required to assess and repair faults, we have significantly strengthened both the number of fault crews and the amount of network equipment stored at strategic locations around the city. Under its agreement with Entrust, Vector has invested in more standby mobile generation, which has already improved our ability to restore power quickly to customers while our crews work to repair the faults. We are also stepping up our community engagement to better manage problematic trees surrounding power lines, and have adopted aerial imaging and data analytics to identify problem vegetation more accurately. In tandem, we continue to collaborate with industry to reform tree regulations that constrain our ability to trim and cut vegetation. The Government’s long-awaited review of tree regulations is currently underway and is expected to provide greater clarity of tree owners’ accountability where trees threaten wider community electricity resilience.
Turning EVs into power sources Our development of a Vehicle to Home (V2H) solution for New Zealand continues at pace, mostly thanks to an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) grant to explore the customer and network benefits of V2H technology. We currently have customers in Piha trialling V2H systems which can effectively turn EVs into mobile batteries. The trial will help determine how this technology would help ease expensive peak demand on our network as well as providing a backup supply for customers during short-term outages. This research is important because, as EV uptake grows, so will the demand for electricity, especially when people want to recharge their EVs at peak times. While we can always keep building more network infrastructure to meet demand peaks, this comes at a very high cost for consumers. Investigating the potential of new technology like V2H allows us to consider alternatives which are more fit-for- purpose and affordable.
Vector DERMS platform In 2018, Vector successfully introduced the first stage of a full company implementation of our Distributed Energy Resources Management System, (DERMS), taking the management of our core assets into the cloud. DERMS is a highly intelligent software system, able to connect distributed energy assets like solar panels and storage battery connections to our traditional infrastructure and management systems. Over the past year, more than 400 customer and network connected resources have been integrated with the network using the DERMS platform to provide visibility and manage the complex and real-time interactions between the network and the ever-increasing number of distributed energy assets. In addition, DERMS is providing an unmatched level of security and reliability to our energy management, including predictions around loading on critical infrastructure assets such as power transformers, and supports improved response to unexpected events, including extreme weather. This has given us confidence that we can scale it up to more than half a million homes and businesses within the next decade. We expect this system to be a high-value strategic asset for many years to come.
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