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After working with more than 50 utilities around the world, successful low-voltage analytics projects follow a “stabilisation” path by focusing on strategies any electricity distributor can adopt, including:

• Pilot for Production
• A Best in Suite mindset (vs “best in breed”)
• Think Platforms

The following is an extract of Future Grid’s paper to be presented at the EEA2024 Conference (https://confer.nz/eea2024) being held at Te Pae, Christchurch from 10 - 12 September.

Introduction to Stabilisation

Many electricity distributors in New Zealand plan to adopt low-voltage analytical systems to support grid visibility and management and to help mitigate the potential impact of growing volumes of distributed energy resources and increasing natural disasters.

Future Grid has worked with more than 50 utilities, including many EDBs in New Zealand, and assessed their low-voltage analytical projects. The most interesting takeaway is that the analytics were not the determining factor towards success - although it is important they work.

Each project can be categorised into four distinct pathways that determine their degree of success or failure. Below is a diagram of each path for a utility when developing LV analytical systems:

Possible system pathways of a complex adaptive system (R. and Rotmans, J. 2007)

Stabilisation

To succeed, every EDB must aim to follow the stabilisation path. Stabilisation can be described as when your LV analytics project attracts the necessary resources and/or out-competes other projects to become self-sustaining or “stabilised” following the acceleration period. Utilities that achieve stabilisation successfully embed LV analytical into their core business processes.

System Breakdown

System Breakdown paths were observed when projects did not gain the necessary support or resources, which were often consumed by existing systems/processes - for example a lack of funding and/or people/knowledge. The status quo of institutional beliefs, norms, and rules is still the same, leading to the project's destabilisation or failure. Essentially, business as usual will prevail. Most pilots have traditionally fallen into this category.

Backlash

A less common but observed path is the unsuccessful adoption of a project, even if it works, due to the organisation's rejection of the change. An example would be the belief that LV analytical functions should reside within incumbent systems, such as the ADMS. As such, even if the LV project is successful, it will not move forward towards stabilisation.

Lock-In

Otherwise known as path-dependence, lock-in was also observed as a common outcome for many projects. This path can be best described as projects that have had investment or funding and these funds have now been exhausted. Even if an ideal solution presents itself, the organisation is now locked into this earlier path. This often occurs when EDBs try to pick winners without considering the wider factors required to achieve the stabilisation of a product.

Strategies towards stabilisation EDBs can adopt now:

Pilot for Production

Time is an EDB's most precious commodity, followed by project funding. Pilots should only be undertaken if they can be scaled into production. The most common observation in NZ is the execution of many pilots. Given that each pilot competes for the same resources, people, and funding, the probability of system breakdown or failure increases significantly.

Example: PG&E in the US recently adopted a new philosophy, “Pilot for Production,” meaning that the purpose of the pilot is to confirm its operation, but they must be confident it can scale to meet their business and IT needs from day one. They have performed fewer pilots but adopted more into production.

Best in Suite

Best in Suite outperforms the traditional “Best in Breed” strategies almost every time in practice. Best in Breed has been a common thought process among utility architects for decades however this trend is shifting. Best in Breed often results in the purchase of many, many complex systems that become difficult to integrate and maintain over time.

Best in Suite is an approach EDBs can adopt that centres on achieving most of the outcomes to a sufficient standard. However, given the reduction in complexity, the chances of stabilisation increases.

Example: CLP in Hong Kong recently embarked on a replacement of a NZ$700M ERP project. They chose the vendor that met the majority of the functionality rather than a number of vendors that were best in class in the functionality. This allowed them to stabilise the solution more quickly.

Platforms

Over time, all analytics become standardised. Analytics alone are ultimately not a differentiator or sufficient to achieve stabilisation. Successful LV analytics projects adopted platforms, that is, solutions that could deliver a wide range of functions that were also flexible enough to support future features and meet wider business needs. Platforms achieve IT/OT and security requirements and can integrate many data sources, standardise data, and serve this data to many users and systems, providing ultimate flexibility.

Example: Many EDBs have deployed transformer monitors and have proposed a cloud solution from their preferred vendor. With the availability of NODS data from smart meters, consideration must now be made on bringing all this data into a single place for user access and standardisation. Examples include:

• Integrate many sources of data to be vendor-independent
• Minimise cloud and storage costs from multiple vendors
• Normalise data into standard analytical functions
• Extend over time as new features and functions become necessary

Future Grid will present at the EEA2024 Conference (https://confer.nz/eea2024), which will be held at Te Pae, Christchurch from 10 - 12 September. The conference will expand on how EDBs can achieve “Sustainable Low Voltage Grid Management: A Maturity Model for Electric Distribution Companies (EDBs)."

Read more about us here: https://www.energynews.co.nz/news/electricity-distribution/155025/buller-sees-safety-cost-gains-dso-solution

Future Grid CEO Chris Law presenting at the Ara Ake Challenge held in New Plymouth