Strengthening Grid Resilience: How Utilities Can Uncover Root Causes & Optimize Reliability
Utilities are under immense pressure to improve reliability amid aging infrastructure, climate instability, and increasing customer demands. They must manage millions of assets as their networks become more complex. In the last decade, weather-related power outages have increased by 78%, costing up to $169 billion each year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. At the end of the day, utilities require advanced tools, data, analysis and actionable insights to get a true picture of the health of their entire grid to make informed decisions when it comes to upgrades and maintenance. Uncovering the true root cause of failures is essential for developing effective tactical and strategic plans.
Determining the True Root Cause
Utility operations prioritize the rapid restoration of power, while engineers focus on utility growth and enhancing system resiliency. Recurring issues underscore the importance of addressing underlying root causes to prevent repeat failures. Additionally, the challenge of integrating data from multiple applications, such as Outage Management Systems (OMS), Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), and Work and Asset Management Systems (WMS/AMS), can further complicate these efforts.
To rapidly address these challenges, we encourage utilities to conduct a grid resiliency assessment. This assessment initially identifies the root causes of failures by integrating data from various sources and utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) for insights.
Implementing the Most Effective Recommendation
Grid resiliency assessments provide prioritized remedies based on industry best practices, proven results, and manufacturers' grid modernization offerings to enhance system resilience. This enables utilities to implement effective grid modernization and network optimization remedies concurrently. As a result, utilities gain a comprehensive understanding of their grid's health and a clear strategy moving forward.
Grid resiliency assessments can include:
- Improving the accuracy of root causes of failures through the use of AI and ML.
- Determining the criticality and impact of failures by utilizing topology models derived from GIS data along with outage data from OMS.
- Identifying network optimization opportunities, such as segmentation needs, unprotected laterals, miscoordination, and phase imbalances.
- Leveraging AMI data to understand momentaries and the actual and potential effectiveness of grid modernization deployments, as well as understanding equipment loading and utilization.
- Providing insights into aging or damaged infrastructure from the substation to the meter, ranked by health, criticality, and costs.
- Providing financial insights for OPEX and CAPEX planning.
- Analyzing the relationship and impact of modernization actions and external factors, such as vegetation, fire hazards, contamination, etc.
- Analysis of prior storm damages to inform and measure the results of proactive grid hardening strategies.
By understanding root causes and focusing on both immediate repairs and long-term solutions, utilities can optimize labor, time, and costs, ultimately improving customer satisfaction by reducing service interruptions.
Benefits of Strategic Grid Assessments
Grid resiliency assessments offer a robust and rapid foundation for prioritizing improvements. Strategies can be tailored to meet customer demands. For example, with several of our customers, SAIDI and SAIFI have traditionally been the primary performance metrics. With the rise of internet usage and remote work, metrics such as MAIFI and CEMI have become increasingly important, requiring the use of data sources like AMI coupled with GIS and OMS. Many customers have had to focus on substantially reducing O&M costs. Grid modernization recommendations have helped utilities reduce O&M costs while delivering reliability improvements.
Sustaining Excellence
As improvements are implemented and new challenges arise, factors such as safety, increasing customer demand, changing load, and evolving financial pressures and opportunities must be managed dynamically. Grid resiliency solutions provide continuous analysis to utilities to help them adapt to changes, measure actual results, and use those results to refine strategic and tactical plans continuously.
