Faced with aging
transmission and distribution infrastructure and limited O&M budgets,
utilities strive to maximize the lifespan of their current equipment by making
optimal decisions on infrastructure replacement and maintenance while reducing
costs and improving customer service. Here are three examples of how Bentley
solutions addressed the unique and daunting challenges of aging T&D
infrastructure.
Indianapolis Power
& Light (IPL) began to collect substation indicator data in AssetWise for
critical assets in 2011. In response to several publicly noticeable manhole
events, IPL also began collecting data for the downtown underground network
distribution system for indicators for manholes, vaults, network transformers,
and network protectors. The goal was to use data to reduce the number of
substation failures, improve proactive maintenance practices, and minimize the
number of incidents in the downtown network system. Additionally, IPL wanted to
improve the overall efficiency of the inspections and create an objective
scoring method for asset health, criticality, risk, and follow-up work order
priorities.
Business logic was built
in to step the inspector through the inspection process to ensure a complete
and thorough inspection. A calculated indicator was configured to take the
inspection data and calculate an overall health score for that asset.
Management and field personnel were kept fully informed via automatic
notifications of the health and status of critical assets and maintenance
programs through an internal website.
The sophistication of
the inspection process (20,000 assets), automation of the data (300,000 indicators),
and prioritization and follow-up work processes resulted in proactive
maintenance practices that have reduced the number of equipment failures in the
downtown network from 49 in 2011 to 15 in 2016. Similarly, substation
transformer failures have been reduced to 0.2 percent, and the number of
circuit breakers failing to close/open is trending down.
Energex determined via
a condition-based risk management analysis that the 57-year-old Zillmere
substation in Brisbane, Australia needed refurbishment. Existing in-service
equipment had deteriorated requiring excessive maintenance on some of the
33-kilovolt circuit breakers and isolators. Aurecon was engaged to undertake
the primary design for equipment that had reached retirement age – including
the replacement of 5 x 33 kilovolt outdoor circuit breakers (including the
foundations), the replacement of 6 x 33 kilovolt bus disconnectors (including
the supporting structures), lightning masts, the replacement of the AC board,
and installation of a new marshalling box for cutover of existing circuit
breaker control circuits in the switchyard.
Aurecon completed the
designs in Bentley Substation so Energex would get the benefit of accurate
drawings and bills of materials and to ensure that the design integrated with
any existing substation equipment not earmarked for replacement. Aurecon used
LiDAR to scan the target area of the substation to develop an as-built 3D
rendered representation. This model was brought into Bentley Substation and
subsequently into their virtual reality facility in Cape Town, South Africa,
enabling Aurecon to do a follow-up virtual site visit, walking through the
substation and discussing the site, close to 12,000 kilometers away from
Brisbane.
This strategy provided
significant insight into how to approach the integration of the new equipment
into the substation and ensure new and replacement equipment was designed and
fabricated to work with existing equipment. The model was shared with civil
services to design the plinths for the substation equipment footings. All the
services models were incorporated into one design model and the project was
registered in ProjectWise. Weekly meetings were held between South Africa- and
Australia-based project engineers and project managers.
Riaan Dippenaar,
project engineer, Aurecon Cape Town, said, “Bentley Substation allowed us the
opportunity to be proactive, accurate, innovative, and collaborative on a
common design base between South Africa and Australia with a feeling of
accomplishment.”
In Sofia, Bulgaria,
infrastructure is managed for the metropolitan region by the Transport
Infrastructure Department. A comprehensive inventory of available public
lighting facilities for the Transport Infrastructure Department was necessary
after an analysis of current street lighting information proved it to be
incomplete and insufficient. The inventory focused on the quantity of street
lighting and the current condition of the infrastructure. The government also
sought to reduce spending public funds on maintenance, improve infrastructure
overall, and lessen the duration of repairs.
Sofia Municipality
retained DAVID Holding Company to develop a geographic information system (GIS)
to oversee and organize the infrastructure. DAVID Holding used Bentley OpenUtilities
to manage the street lighting infrastructure and collected condition data. The
project team used OpenUtilities’ pre-configured electric data model as the
foundation for the customized street lighting data model, which lowered
deployment costs and allowed DAVID Holding to meet the project deadline by
cutting a significant amount of design time.
OpenUtilities provides
a single source of information for Sofia planners, engineers, and operations
professionals to understand the current physical state of the public lighting
facilities and make better decisions about maintenance, improving customer
service processes while reducing operational costs. The GIS also improved
budget planning for the municipality. Upgrading the street lighting where
needed, making requisite repairs swiftly, and lowering environmental impact
will serve to benefit the nearly 1.3 million residents of the expansive Sofia
Municipality.
Petya Todorova, senior
expert, DAVID Holding, said, “Bentley OpenUtilities gave us the freedom to
define a complex data model that best fits our needs. Moreover, OpenUtilities
technology enables every participant in the management of the infrastructure to
use a single source of information, which significantly improves our work.”
