Electricity Asset Management Plan 2019-2029
166
Vector Limited://
We will need smart instrumentation to monitor the performance of network elements and provide data to enable us to understand asset health, network loading, energy flows, and when the power goes off, outage locations. This needs to be supported by back-office analytics capability that can sift through the data to identify those items needing attention. We are initiating a programme to selectively install measuring sensors on the LV terminals of distribution transformers with a focus on areas of high DER penetration, and/or poor network performance. We need to establish the software platforms to capture, analyse and filter the field data. Together with two Metering Equipment Providers (MEPs) we are trialling the use of smart meters at customer premises to provide outage and restoration notification to speed up identification of the location and magnitude of outage area. Current practices require customer calls to be logged by the service centre, service requests raised, and the FSP service crew dispatched, a very manual process. Our target using smart metering information will have the fault location identified within ~5 minutes, system-generated service requests and a crew despatched to the fault location and our outage app updated with current information, much faster that is currently the case. We have established power-quality (PQ) monitoring capability across approximately half of our zone substations and all GXPs. The purpose behind this programme is to monitor long-term trending of power-quality deterioration, especially as the next ten years will see an increase in the connection of solar/PV inverters and EV chargers, both of which have the potential adversely impact power quality. By trending we can observe PQ changes over time so remedial steps may be taken to halt the deterioration advance if necessary. The existing PQ monitoring capability has been found to be beneficial in identifying causes of customers plant mal-operation. Relating plant outage times to voltage sags/swells on the network aids customers by identifying a cause of the plant outage and allows them to install equipment to minimise the impact of future events. Progressively extending the PQ programme so we can monitor power quality across the remaining zone substations is the long term plan, so we can extend the benefits gained from the existing PQ monitored substation to the whole network. Because of our increasing dependence on the LV network we are investigating opportunities for improving its resilience and reliability. This will involve trialling “new” network equipment to ensure it delivers cost-effective solutions that can be extended for wider use across the network. This area is increasingly important as it allows emerging network problems to be identified, workable solutions found and incorporated into standard network designs before they become significant.
TARGETED OUTCOMES
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
SAFETY
RELIABILITY
RESILIENCE
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
CYBER SECURITY AND PRIVACY
OPTIONS CONSIDERED Options are summarised below.
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
ESTIMATED COST (NPV IF APPLICABLE)
STATUS
Improve monitoring capability on the LV network
Option 1: Do nothing. Growth on the LV network particularly with increased penetration of distributed generation and electric vehicles together with higher expectations from customers means that ‘Do-nothing’ is not an option Option 2: Installation of instrumentation on the LV network. The installation of metering within distribution substations offers the ability to monitor the load and condition of the distribution substation and also flag when operating outside accepted limits Option 1: Do nothing. With increased penetration of distributed generation and electric vehicles we should be increasing our PQ monitoring capability, rather than
Rejected
$10.0M Selected
Increase our PQ monitoring capability
Rejected
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