United Energy – Distribution automation excellence
Australian distribution utility, United Energy, reaps the rewards of its focus on improved system reliability and safety supported by automated switching and network intelligence.
This feature article was originally published in The Global Power & Energy Elites 2022
Located in Victoria, United Energy’s distribution automation initiative has marked a major milestone in the energy transformation of the southeastern Australian state.
The project, innovative in both scope and approach, was launched in 2018 and has well-positioned the utility to enable electrification and support the low carbon future that is the state’s ambition.
United Energy’s distribution automation was initiated in 2016 as an operational initiative to deliver a sustained improvement in system reliability through distribution management technology, analytics and integration with Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI) and other system data.
Innovation, Strategy, Design
The initiative was born out of a corporate drive for utilising technology in innovative ways to support operational excellence, higher customer satisfaction and superior financial performance. With a sophisticated approach to smart grid technology, network reliability and performance-based incentives and with the support of regulators, system-wide deployment has been undertaken across United Energy’s service territory, which encompasses east and southeast Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula.
The programme was undertaken by the utility’s internal network analytics and information technology teams in partnership with Oracle Utilities.
Activities included upgrading the distribution management system, building a full low voltage (LV) network model, developing a mobility solution for field switching (integrated with the DMS) and implementing Oracle’s Operations Mobile Application (OMA) for fault response.
United Energy also developed a forecasting tool that utilises weather forecasts to predict the field labour requirements for fault response; as well as a fault prioritisation engine that draws on real-time travel data and customer outage numbers and locations to indicate where crews should be directed to optimise network safety and reliability.
United Energy considers that from a technology perspective, the most notable aspect of the initiative was a methodical, disciplined approach to developing and proving out
distribution automation use cases, starting with fault location, isolation and system restoration (FLISR).
This technology automatically executes high voltage (HV) fault switching where safe to do so and has restored over 300,000 customers in approximately 45 seconds since it was implemented. With FLISR, the utility was able to achieve the maximum possible performance bonus for system reliability from the Australian Energy Regulator in 2020.
Funding for the project was on a ‘pay as you go’ basis, drawing on its emerging economic benefits. “We are funding the journey with the benefits we recognise from each iteration,” explains Adam Gellie, General Manager for Service Delivery at United Energy.
“We don’t strive for ‘perfect’ – just ‘better’. We then bank the benefits and reinvest in the next best use case. That’s how we achieve excellence over time, redesigning inefficient processes and giving our control room valuable information to make great decisions.”
Gellie adds that the utility’s investment decisions are on track both to exceed the projected two-year payback and to return between five and seven times the cost over a five-year period. We don’t strive for ‘perfect’ – just ‘better’. We then bank benefits and reinvest in the next best use case.
Read the full project feature here
