Electricity Asset Management Plan 2019-2029
192
Vector Limited://
The capital investment described in this ‘Needs Statement’ will target the improvement of network resilience with a focus on our OH network. This will involve amongst others improving the insulation coordination in areas that are prone to outages caused by lightning by undertaking a detailed insulation coordination study to ensure the network is properly protected against overvoltages. It will involve installing additional lightning arrestors at strategic locations to remove overvoltages due to lightning and switching surges. We will trial the installation of a variety of equipment to make the network more resilient against strong winds and falling branches and tree bark e.g. improved stays and/or additional stays, the use of 11 kV aerial bundled conductors, spaced covered conductors and, grouped covered conductors. Vector will actively investigate with equipment vendors equipment and installation methodologies that might improve resilience. The active control of vegetation is another major programme but this is described under a separate ‘Needs Statement’ further above in Section 5.
We regularly liaise with City Power in Melbourne and Western Power in Perth on their asset management strategies for OH lines in adverse environmental conditions and the lessons that they have learnt.
TARGETED OUTCOMES
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
SAFETY
RELIABILITY
RESILIENCE
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
CYBER SECURITY AND PRIVACY
OPTIONS CONSIDERED
DESCRIPTION
DISCUSSION OF OPTION
ESTIMATED COST (NPV IF APPLICABLE)
STATUS
Option 1: Do nothing
A do-nothing approach is not an option and will continue to result in poor SAIFI and SAIDI indices, poor experience by customers of Vector’s electricity network, poor service levels and risk to Vector’s reputation. In light of the predicted impact of climate change and environmental events this option is not viable and is rejected New technology options such as Microgrids are a viable alternative option to improve resilience especially to remote rural parts of the network. Solar panels and on-site batteries are options by customers themselves to improve resilience but notwithstanding that customers can and will use these as options to improve their own resilience there are feeders and supplies where it is not practical to rely on either new technology options or customer initiated options to maintain service levels and capital investment is needed to improve the reliability of the network to acceptable service levels. Section 5 contains a number of Microgrid projects and is only rejected as an option for this specific programme. Investing capital to improve network reliability is necessary to maintain service levels to customers and to maintain SAIDI and SAIFI reliability indices levels to regulatory levels. This investment is necessary to make the Vector network ready for the anticipated impacts of climate change and environmental events.
Rejected
Option 2: Use new network technology options such as microgrids, solar panels and domestic on-site batteries
Rejected as a solution for this specific programme
Option 3: Invest capital to improve the reliability of the network
$10.50M Selected
PROPOSED INVESTMENT SUMMARY ($MILLION NOMINAL)
DESCRIPTION
FY20
FY21
FY22
FY23
FY24
FY25
FY26
FY27
FY28
FY29 TOTAL
Auckland resilience improvements
0.55
0.55
0.55
0.55
0.55
0.55
0.55
0.55
0.55
0.55
5.50
Northern resilience improvements
0.50
0.50
0.50
0.50
0.50
0.50
0.50
0.50
0.50
0.50
5.00
Total CAPEX
1.05
1.05
1.05
1.05
1.05
1.05
1.05
1.05
1.05
1.05
10.50
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online