FEATURE ASSET MANAGEMENT REINVENTING ASSET MANAGEMENT
The digital transformation of the energy industry is uncovering fresh opportunities for distribution system operators (DSOs) to extract maximum value from their grid assets. Exploiting these opportunities will help meet the immense challenge of finding a balance between expenditure and quality of supply, while managing potential risks, says Franck Blonbou, electrical engineering services manager at Nexans
H
aving to tackle the relentless march of innovation, electrification and
increasing volumes of decentralised energy resources and electric vehicles (EVs) that will accompany decarbonisation, DSOs are finding themselves under all sorts of pressure. The rapidly changing landscape of the energy industry and stricter market regulations present a growing challenge of providing an affordable, sustainable and secure electricity supply. Exacerbating the issue is the build-up
of internal obstacles such as aging infrastructure, growing budget constraints, and the loss of expertise as highly skilled and experienced employees retire. For example, almost 70 per cent of the US power grid’s transformers and transmission lines are over 25 years old. Fortunately, digital transformation of the energy industry offers new and efficient tools to face this challenge head-on - most notably in the ambit of asset management. Energy utilities are often data rich but
intelligence poor, collating vast amounts of data in asset registers, without necessarily linking it back to a strategy designed to support long-term business goals. This is where digital technologies can become a critical decision making aid for efficient asset management.
PUTTING THE DATA TO WORK Information is at the core of effective asset management. Maintenance and renewal strategies should be designed on the basis of tangible data and realistic forecasts. Without it, finding the right balance between minimising the risk of equipment failures, safeguarding adequate network performance, and efficiently managing capital and operating spend, becomes virtually impossible. While the vital information is
abundant, it is often distributed across various stakeholders within the DSO network – from asset managers to maintenance and engineering teams, to human resources and finance functions. In fact, siloed data is one of the leading issues facing DSOs today, inhibiting their ability to find service improvements and operational savings.
40 OCTOBER 2019 | ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Making reliable projections, if there
are so many variables to consider, becomes extremely difficult for asset managers if the intelligence to collect and manage the data is absent. New factors, such as the spread of renewable energy sources on the one hand and the intensification of demand on the other, also have a radical impact on the distribution network lifecycle, particularly on critical components. However, recent developments in
augmented intelligence have resulted in solutions capable of centralising data and generating a virtual model, or digital twin, of the complete distribution network. Such a model allows the optimisation of maintenance and renewal policy planning, while considering the constraints imposed by variables such as business rules, regulatory aspects, technical policies, and available resources.
DIGITAL TWIN A digital twin provides DSOs with unprecedented access to data. For instance, asset managers can quickly identify and measure correlations between distribution grid performance, capital expenditure and maintenance costs, as well as risks across all silos. This data accurately reflects the entire network and the processes used to manage it, enables the creation and testing of different scenarios, and contributes to fully informed decision making based on clear projections. However, for the projections to be
realistic, digital twins should factor in the
aging profile and behaviour of electrical assets. This includes factors such as location, temperature, humidity, and stable or transient current load. To facilitate this approach, Nexans has developed a strategic asset management solution, Asset Electrical, which incorporates a system modelling platform developed by Cosmo Tech, its technology partner. To make the solution as inclusive as
possible, the company has combined the Common Network Asset Indices Methodology (CNAIM) framework with its own ‘apparent age’ methodology. While the CNAIM methodology can measure probability of failure and its consequences, the British regulator OFGEM recognises the pre-established values and statistics for each asset category and calculation methodology only for a period of five to ten years. The Nexans methodology, however,
eliminates this constraint by allowing asset managers to use asset aging profiles for each category and network simulation to reproduce weekly real-life activities, failures and related repairs or replacement. The simulation measures are based on four themes – quality of service (with SAIDI indicators), financial performance (with network CAPEX/OPEX and with DSO tariff indicators), safety performance, and key HR availability. For DSOs, harnessing the power of data
offers new possibilities to take asset management to the next level.
Nexans
nexans.com
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