Utility Week

26 | NOVEMBER 2022 | UTILITY WEEK Technology Download report Optimising underground asset performance A new report by Utility Week, in association with Kelvatek, sheds light on lessons learned from the latter's partnership with Electricity North West. Here, ENW's Steve Cox, sets out the barriers and opportunities around enhanced LV network monitoring. O fgem's objectives broadly re ect both the needs of customers and the direc- tion set out in the government's recent Ten Point Energy Plan to accelerate net zero during ED2 – but at a price that customers can a• ord. While those are the two primary dimensions, however, a third I would add is supply reliability. Of the 93,000 proper- ties that lost power in the North West due to Storm Arwen, we restored 18,000 within three minutes and 90% within 48 hours. That still le‹ a number of customers in rural areas o• for signiŒ cantly longer. These are three – hopefully complemen- tary but sometimes con icting – vectors rolled into a really interesting challenge. Ofgem, to its credit, has provided £500 million in innovation funding across ED1. That is really starting to show in network business investment plans – with that fund- ing paying more than several times over in cost reductions, and with customers see- ing very signiŒ cant increases in supply and reliability. The frequency of supply interruptions on Electricity North West's network has halved over the past eight years, with duration drop- ping by around 60%. A lot of that has come about through investment in technology. However, it's not through simply replac- ing assets that you deliver such performance – it's through sensing and monitoring. When deployed at scale, these technolo- gies can yield beneŒ ts not only in terms of reliability, but in terms of replacing assets less frequently, extending lifespan, refur- bishing them, and also boosting capacity en route to net zero. Yet, while network businesses know a lot about assets above ground, they know very little about what's beneath their feet. Replacement models suggest that low- voltage cables, which represent approxi- mately 60% of DNO-controlled assets, only need to be replaced every 1,000 years. This suggests they are being managed reactively and are not subject to more advanced and e™ cient asset management techniques. What will happen when we start to increase the load on them? How will that a• ect reliability? What we've found is that advanced sensing gives you an insight into the health of those assets in addition to their capacity for load and renewable generation, as well as improving the reliability. Deploy- ing monitoring and sensing technology is a real win-win. ENW's network visibility strategy When people debate net zero, they talk about opening up networks so that customers can connect low-carbon technologies. However, there are a number of potential barriers. One of them is power quality – e• ectively how clean, in a technical sense rather than a "green" sense, the electricity is. If electric- ity is not clean enough, appliances won't run properly. That can act as an early barrier to connection. Additionally, there are both thermal bar- riers – a cable becoming too hot because of the amount of power – and voltage barriers – insu™ cient or excessive voltage on the cable causing appliances to shut down. The lat- ter has been one of the real challenges with photovoltaics, for example, with excess volt- age on the network causing it to shut down. As technologies increasing the amount of power owing through the network are deployed, you'll hit one of these barriers, then another, then another – and they'll swap positions in the stack. You need to measure each parameter to o• er true net- work visibility and gauge where headroom exists. Very low-cost sensors will, for exam- ple, accurately measure only thermal perfor- mance rather than power quality or voltage. Come the end of ED1, Electricity North West will have fully covered 40% of all cus- tomers. Our ED2 strategy is to ensure that Download report

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