Cobus Nel, Transpower’s general manager for information services and technology, highlights how New Zealand’s push to electrify the economy and meet its net-zero carbon commitments is transforming the energy industry and the work his team does. 

“More wind, solar and power storage solutions are being added to the system, the needs of our connected customers continue to evolve, and real-time pricing and distributed energy resource markets are adding further complexity to the electricity system and its operation,” says Nel. 

To support these changes, the Transpower team, through its three-year data and analytics programme, is focused on using quality data and analytics to simplify decision-making and streamline processes.

“A great example of this can be seen in an ongoing project being worked on by our IST and Operations divisions,” says Nel. “Together, they have already successfully delivered a new real-time analytical, visualisation, and notification tool for our national coordination centres in Wellington and Hamilton as part of our Situational Intelligence programme. This supports the new real-time pricing project Transpower is developing and implementing on behalf of the Electricity Authority. “

The tool brings together SCADA and Market System data on a single screen, eliminating the need to look at multiple screens and tables, aiding the real-time system operation and enabling proactive monitoring of inputs into the market system and subsequent outputs. This helps to avoid potential impacts on the electricity market that would result from errors in the dispatch or price of electricity. 

“This new visualisation tool gives operators clear sight of the system so that they can make faster, more consistent, real-time decisions. It also allows them to create rules and alerts to monitor stations or market schedules in real-time,” adds Nel. 

“Feedback from operators working in our national coordination centres has been overwhelmingly positive and illustrated how much Situational Intelligence will help with decision making in dynamic and complex scenarios.”

Digital Visual Data Capture (DVDC) is another initiative the team has been heavily involved with and utilises the power of new technologies and data.  

DVDC utilises drone technology to capture high-definition images of the condition of conductors, towers and poles, substation gantries and other facilities. The value of this data is realised through: 

• Greater clarity on how we can prioritise our asset maintenance
• Optimising investments in the National Grid
• Improving safety by minimising climbing hours by service providers
• Cost savings on condition assessments by no longer requiring helicopter flyovers and reducing manual climbing hours 
• Much less environmental impact

Earlier this year, Transpower reached a significant milestone with all its service providers being fully trained, qualified, and having operational drone teams to carry out this work.

“During its investigation, DVDC was seen as being a critical enabler to a wider Intelligent conductor management programme which looks at new ways in which we manage our conductor maintenance and replacement programme. The ability of DVDC to help us improve our decision making in this work was a no-brainer opportunity for us,” says Nel.

“Both workstreams are unique in how they are transforming our approach to regular business processes, standardising effective data acquisition and use to significantly improve our decision making both in real-time situations and long-term investment planning,” he adds.