From analogue to digital: Designing the substations of tomorrow

Yusuf Latief finds out how three substation projects, presented during the Bentley Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital awards, showcase the value behind digitalising operations with digital twin technologies.

For those of us in the distribution and transmission landscape, there is no doubt as to the importance of substations.

They are so important, in fact, that when Bentley Systems hosted their awards show in Singapore, all of the finalist projects in the T&D category were those of substations digitalisation.

Specifically, each used Bentley’s digital tech to bolster efficiencies and improve workflows.

Here is their work:

Winner: PowerChina Hubei Electric Engineering

Full Lifecycle Digital Application on Xianning Chibi 500kV Substation Project 

Winning the transmission and distribution category this year was the Xianning Chibi 500kV substation, a key project in Hubei, Central China, aimed to meet Xianning’s power load growth demand.

Run by engineering firm PowerChina Hubei Engineering, the project had to tackle complex topography challenges, requiring a compact layout and compounded by a short construction period.

Faced with coordinating multiple engineering disciplines, PowerChina realised that traditional workflows were insufficient to timeously deliver the project within budget. Aiming to achieve full lifecycle digitisation, they needed integrated 3D/4D modelling and digital twin technology.

The firm selected Bentley’s applications to establish a collaborative digital design environment, 4D visual construction methodology and a full 3D substation digital twin.

The integrated technology solution reduced the project footprint by 0.97ha, minimising farmland impact and saving CNY282.84 million (approximately €36.5 million; $38.7 million) in costs.

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Working in a coordinated design and construction management platform, the team avoided more than 50 reworks, reducing the construction period by 30 days.

The digital twin facilitates real-time asset insight and smart substation management, states PowerChina, setting a benchmark for digitisation of the State Grid.

Presenting on the project was PowerChina’s Xinyang Ye: “The Chibi 500kW substation is a perfect blend of nature, culture and industry, and the use of Bentley’s digital solution in this project has been recognised and praised by industry experts.

“The project adopts ProjectWise for collaborative design, which reduces design time by 30 days, tracking time by 35 days and saves design cost of about CNY130,000 (approximately €17,097; $17,769).

“The use of the refined model and digital twin technology guided the construction progress perfectly.”

Local history and a unique design challenge

According to Ye, an interesting aspect from the project, and a design challenge they had to overcome, was taking inspiration from the area’s history. Namely that of the Three Kingdoms Period in China and the Chibi war.

“This substation deploys the design concept of Three Kingdom culture (…) the walls of the sites, areas of the substation; there are a lot of Chinese cultural elements that are incorporated as part of the design.

“We incorporated elements like the total designs of iconic drawings on certain parts of the substation and we tried to integrate the overall layout of the natural environment and the substation.”

Part of the challenge for this, added Ye, was to “have the workers understand the very precise details in a design; we integrated through the use of VR and AR to make these designs more understandable for the workers so that they’re able to implement the construction.

“And because we were working on very tight timelines we incorporated the very precise model with smart identification or intelligent education so that the owner can better oversee the progress.”

Finalist: Elia

Digital transformation and connected ITwins in smart substation design 

Aligned with their mission to optimise grid reliability and quality and ensure sustainable power, Belgian national electricity transmission operator Elia has been exploring digital technology and workflows for infrastructure development and asset management.

Their project, presented by IsaLink CAD/EDM/GID/IT trainer and consultant Nicolas Tobbackx, focuses on transitioning an otherwise obsolete drawing file management system and engineering processes to a centralised digital platform and smart digital workflows.

According to Tobbackx, their main goals were to integrate these workflows into a ‘rule-based workflow’ whereby having “a single version of the truth across operations allows for significant efficiencies.

Other challenges Elia has been facing includes aspects such as:

• Working from home, introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic when “using a VPN was very slow in ‘chatty’ applications”;
• Safety distance within substations – “it’s very important to have secure distances between your phases because it can be very, very dangerous”;
• Community relations for a country like Belgium, which is “very dense; not everybody wants to have aerial lines in their back garden”; and
• IT security and compatibility, where although it’s very important to have heightened security and standards, “new security implies newer versions and compatibility issues”

To oversee these issues and coordinate their workflow processes, Elia needed an integrated technology management and digital twin solution that included reference file support (BS 1192) and intelligent connections, as well as improved hand-off with third parties.

Elia selected ProjectWise as their file management system, aiming to optimise accessibility and traceability for more efficient planning management, estimated to save up to €150,000 (approximately $159,000) per year.

According to Tobbackx, ProjectWise enabled the project to run more than two million documents over 2Tb used by more than 700 users.

Two key outcomes that were very important to note, he adds, were lightning calculation and geolocation.

With the OpenUtilities Substation, the physical layout of the substation can be generated in 3D, using a catalogue of equipment objects that “snap together”, according to Bentley, at predefined hook points.

This enables built-in 3D tools to design the grounding grid and lighting protection, also allowing for analysis of cable sag, clearances and clashes – “lightning calculation was a big win for us (…) and very important was geolocation. I cannot say this enough.”

Namely, having a digital representation of infrastructure assets visible on a gas insulated switch (GIS) viewer, part of the infrastructure digital twin from Bentley, was of big use for the project team – “it’s so important to have everything geolocated.”

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Finalist: Qinghai Kexin Power Design Institute

110kV Transmission and Transformation Project in Deerwen, Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China 

Covering 3.8ha in Qinghai, China, Deerwen’s 110kV substation will relieve long-term power shortages in six towns, improving living conditions and promoting economic development.

Located in a high-altitude, mountainous area with complex terrain, the multidiscipline project presented site, technical and coordination challenges.

The project team realised that they needed an integrated design and Building Information Modelling solution to optimise project delivery.

The team selected Bentley’s open applications, facilitating collaborative design workflows and real-time rendering in the hopes of achieving a refined, coordinated design of the substation and facilities amid the natural surroundings.

Stated Guangren Li from Qinghai Kexin Electric Power Design Institute: “In order to reduce the project cost and protect the ecological environment, according to the environmental characteristics of the extremely cold and high altitude areas traversed by the transmission line, the project implements the concept of environmental protection design and reduced the amount of earthwork excavation by about 70%.

“The construction of Deerwen (…) is conducive to strengthening the power grid structure Guoluo Tibetan area, meeting the clean energy heating and electricity demands and living standards of farmers and herdsmen and has good social benefits.”

The team identified and resolved 657 collisions and shortened the design period by 40 days, improving design quality and construction efficiency by 35%.

Developing a precise design saved 30% in material quantities and avoided resource waste to reduce the project’s carbon footprint.

The 3D models and digitised data also provide the basis for intelligent digital plant operations and maintenance.

According to Li, the use of Bentley’s 3D software also helped:

• The team find over 50 design anomalies
• Reduce design time to one month and design error rate by 90%
• Improve design quality and speed up the design schedule
• Save human resources and time, including 200 person-days of design modification work, 100 person-days of review work and 100 person-days of on-site error handling work”
• CNY200,000 (approximately €25,806; $27,342) in design costs.

Organised by Bentley Systems, a US-based global software company, the annual Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards is open to all Bentley software users and brings together projects from across the industry to showcase their innovations. This year’s edition was convened in the highly digitalised country of Singapore.

Transmission and distribution was but one of 12 categories, the others included bridge and tunnels, process and power generation, subsurface modelling and analysis, surveying and modelling, water and wastewater, structural engineering, roads and highways, rail and transit, construction, enterprise engineer and facilities and campuses and cities.