Electricity Asset Management Plan 2019-2029
18 Vector Limited://
THE ELECTRIFICATION OF TRANSPORT Electric vehicles (EVs) are growing in popularity, not just globally but also in Auckland. They will continue to do so as the purchase cost of an electric car declines over the next decade. Vector has trialled a number of 50 kilowatt (kW) rapid EV chargers across the city to cater to the region’s growing fleet of EVs and to build understanding of how charging technology interacts and impacts on the electricity network. This has highlighted a wider, future challenge - as EV use increases, it will only be a matter of time before charging these cars puts pressure on Auckland’s electricity network to supply the demand. A greater penetration of EVs charging at peak times using residential feeders could lead to a need for more infrastructure to meet this peak demand. A standard dwelling tends to operate at an after diversity maximum demand of 2.5kW. If a 50kW rapid charger was installed into an average home, it is comparable to adding another 20 dwellings to the feeder circuit. A proliferation of chargers (even a typical home AC charger which is closer to 7 kW) could lead to challenges around peak demand if not managed. Vector’s investment in software management systems will help reduce the impact residential EV chargers have on peak demand. If we have access to data to enhance visibility and understanding of each customer’s behaviour, it provides the opportunity to incentivise behaviour to better manage demand peaks. For example, we can offer a financial incentive to customers who opt to charge their EV in the middle of the night by choosing that option themselves or giving us permission to do it on their behalf. Vector has also explored the potential of Vehicle to Grid (V2G) and Vehicle to Home (V2H) chargers. EVs take power from the grid to charge the car’s battery. A V2G system can reverse the process by putting power back into the grid from the battery. This has the potential to transform EVs into mobile power sources for homes and businesses (for example, an EV with a 30kWh battery capacity could supply the average household load for 12 hours before fully discharging.) This new rechargeable energy source could be used to supplement imported electricity to buildings, and be a cheaper power source during times of peak consumption. It could also be a way to supply homes during power outages – and to release energy back to the grid to support the network during times of high energy demand. Vector is committed to understanding more about these emerging technologies, and facilitate their uptake to benefit our customers by putting more control into their hands.
PROGRESSING THE JOURNEY TOWARDS CUSTOMER CENTRICITY THROUGH DATA ANALYTICS We are continuing our journey to meet our customers’ needs in a safe, reliable and affordable way. A key aspect of this journey is enabling the network to facilitate and integrate the new energy management technologies our customers are adopting in such a way that the overall cost of managing the network is reduced. At the same time, this approach can improve overall resilience, the customer experience and the way we communicate and update our customers. We are transforming our systems to deal with new data from multiple sources, allow faster processing of data and minimise manual intervention, while improving our ability to collaborate with external parties such as Civil Defence. These systems consider activity across network operations, network integration, data and customer experience. Given the impact of severe weather events on the network and the community, we have asked our customers to tell us what is important to them when it comes to their service experience during outages. This feedback has enabled us to redesign our customer facing tools and systems to ensure they are fit for purpose. Our customers tell us that accurate and up to date communications during power outages is very important. They expect us to provide network information that is relevant to them – and they want the message delivered through their preferred communications channel. Vector is delivering on this by investing in a totally new web based outage application, which provides customers information and updates of outages affecting them irrespective of where they live in Auckland. Through the new online portal, customers can set up their own notification preferences. This gives Vector the necessary permissions to provide customers with notifications to keep them up to date with planned and unplanned outages. This new online outage app replaces Vector’s previous outage app - which could not cope with the unprecedented surge in customers trying to contact us after the extreme storm of April 2018. The outage app has been built to a standard that enables Vector to seamlessly scale our customer communications in the event of a major storm. CASE STUDY COMMUNICATING WITH CUSTOMERS DURING OUTAGES
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