Creating Smarter Asset-Management Strategies For T&D Utilities
By Satish Saini, HEXstream utility industry specialist
There are many factors that propel utilities to adopt smarter asset-managmenet strategies informed by performance insights from relevant analytics. Consider just some of these factors:
- Aging T&D grid infrastructure leading to equipment failures
- Climate change causing adverse weather events and impacting power infrastructure reliability
- Customer needs for reliable power
- Utilities' needs for sustainable, efficient and cost-effective business operations
- Regulatory pressure to maintain operational and safety standards
- Renewable energy sources penetration to the T&D grid
There are many challenges, unfortunately, but solutions to overcome these challenges get smarter every day. Let's explore...
Aging infrastructure, grid reliability and resiliency: The majority of domestic T&D infrastructure is already aging and reaching the end of life, which is leading to frequent failures, blackouts, power-quality issues and increased maintenance costs. Extreme weather events and natural disasters pose further risks to grid reliability and stability and cause heavy expenses due to damages.
According to the US Department of Energy (DOE), much of the US electric grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s, and 70% of the infrastructure is approaching the end of their typical 50–80-year lifecycle. This has major consequences on our communities—power
outages, susceptibility to cyberattacks, emergencies caused by faulty grid infrastructure.
Its very hard to replace and upgrade all of this infrastructure, as numerous assets along high-voltage transmission lines and substations are quite expensive and involve huge investments.
However, effective asset-management plans and automated performance insights can help defer some of the replacement costs through predictive analysis regarding asset-health conditions and through critical condition-based monitoring and maintenance
of critical and expensive assets (think transformers, circuit breakers, etc.).
These insights help maximize the lifecycle of assets.
Asset operational efficiency & performance affecting utility financial sustainability: Inefficient operation and performance of assets due to aging and other factors leads to higher system losses, grid/asset failures, voltage fluctuations, power-quality issues and system overloads. These things derail utility operational efficiency, of course, and hurt financial sustainability and cost recovery.
Huge capital investment on replacement and increased operations & maintenance (O&M) costs of inefficient assets push utilities toward developing and implementing asset-management strategies to efficiently manage the grid through strategic investments, optimizing O&M costs, enhancing equipment lifecycles and improving financial sustainability.
Digital transformation, real-time monitoring and AI-driven, automated asset-performance insights inform effective data-driven decision-making, as traditional manual inspections and maintenance methodologies lead to delays and inefficient decisions. And as you know, data-driven analytics on proactive and predictive condition-based maintenance more efficient than reactive maintenance.
Regulatory compliance & safety standards: There is a greater public dependency on power. There is increased customer expectation on power quality and reliability. There are more complex requirements to comply with myriad standards and government regulations related to reliability, safety and environmental targets. Failure to meet these goals results in heavy penalties for utilities.
A critical part of the strategy to meet these goals is effective asset-management strategies and procedures, which help utilities ensure compliance with grid codes and safety standards (like NERC, FERC, IEEE). Further monitoring of emission levels from grid operations (substations and other assets) helps monitor and meet environmental regulations. Technologies and solutions like real-time monitoring and asset-performance insights help reduce the risks of equipment failures and outages through proactive actions. Automated analytics and reporting mechanisms enhance accuracy in compliance and reducing errors and operational costs. Win win win.
Renewable energy resources and EV penetration impacting grid assets: Increasing penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and electric-vehicle charging infrastructure at various segments along the T&D grid is creating new operational challenges for the grid due to reverse and two-way power flow and increased fault levels. This affects a large number of grid assets at transmission lines, substation and distribution feeders, all while triggering the need for heavy replacements and upgrades.
For efficient integration and utilization of DERs and the efficient operation of EV-charging infrastructure, efficient and optimized asset-management strategies and investment prioritization is required to maintain operational efficiency and peak performance of the grid.
So how do we do this?
T&D utilities must develop and implement strong asset =-management strategies, programs and frameworks using digital technologies to ensure grid reliability, support renewables, comply with regulations, and enhance financial sustainability. A modern asset-management plan using digital technologies and data-driven, predictive, and proactive asset-performance
monitoring enables utilities to future-proof their infrastructure and improve customer service.
Next up: A closer look at key assets along the T&D grid, pillars, strategies and roadmap for effective utility-asset management.
