NIMBUS will revolutionise the way detailed meteorological data and models are used in the design and decision-making of electricity assets, through innovative uses of the data and predictive modelling techniques.
The project meets the scope:
- By investigating how novel uses of data and digital platforms can significantly improve network planning, modelling, and forecasting capabilities. NIMBUS will investigate novel ways to use and interpret meteorological data to improve decision-making by focusing on a use-case driven approach and real-world application testing by SSEN.
- By creating enterprise and business processes to facilitate the flow of data within and between organisations. NIMBUS will create processes, using the Open Energy framework, for accessing and understanding meteorological data, thereby demonstrating the increased value of data when it is connected in a federated, decentralised, many-to-many digital system.
The experience of Partners is summarised below and detailed in AppendixQ3-2:
SSEN Transmission (SSEN-T) is best placed to lead this project because its network extends over some of the UK's most challenging terrain and faces extremes of weather and altitude in the UK. SSEN-T is focused on developing real world solutions to support cost-efficient asset intervention planning and decision making.
SSEN Distribution (SSEN-D) faces similar weather and climate related challenges to SSEN-T but has different types of assets to manage, so brings a different network perspective to this project.
Icebreaker One, winner of the 'Modernising Energy Data Access' competition, is leading the work developing Open Energy, a service that makes it easy to search, access and securely share energy data.
The users of this innovation will initially be energy networks, but the aim is to create solutions that also support other asset industries, such as transport and telecoms. These users have similar needs to the energy networks as they are also managing assets on networks that are exposed to the environment.
Problem Bring Solved
The problem that NIMBUS is trying to solve is that the limitations of current weather and climate (meteorological) data mean that it is impossible to predict, with any great degree of accuracy, the impact that weather events and climate change will have on the individual assets that make up our electricity networks across their lifetime.
SSEN's electricity network assets run across the UK's most challenging terrain and are subject to the extremes of the UK weather. With a life cycle of 40-60 years, assets built today will need to remain resilient during a period when climate change is predicted to extend both the duration and intensity of the weather extremes experienced today.
The design and predictive modelling techniques, used in building today's electricity networks, utilise only basic locational data in an attempt to generically model the effects and impacts of weather and climate on assets at a regional or circuit level only. When weather data is used, it is only accessible weather forecasts at best based on a 2km grid at a height of 10m with smoothed out orography and topology.
NIMBUS will take the most recent developments in detailed locational meteorological data and associated predictive technologies and integrate this data with other asset and environmental data. After the Beta phase, the data will be accessible via the Open Energy Search and Access Control and in a format that is ready to use in visualisation tools (such as ARCGIS).
The ability to predict the impact of weather and climate more accurately on our assets will lead to improved asset management decision making across the lifecycle of the assets. The opportunities that could be realised as a result of this project are reduced network faults, extended asset life spans and improved safety, leading to reduced disruption and costs, all to the benefit of the consumer. The outputs could also extend to other linear asset networks such as transport and telecommunications and provide similar benefits in those sectors.
Impacts and benefits
The value in continuing to pursue NIMBUS is high, as it fulfills a clear user need, utilises new data sources and methodologies, and has clear benefits and cost savings.
We have conducted a preliminary CBA that indicates a net saving of ~4.5% to the consumer across the asset base
The benefits to the consumer are summarised in the Table Appendix 3
Economic
.The ability to forecast asset degradation more accurately enables a risk-based approach to condition assessment that has the potential to reduce assessment frequency (and therefore cost of assessment) for low-risk assets.
Resilience
The use case will enable better asset resilience by improving the accuracy of grid-wide risk scoring within the asset risk models and methodologies used within the UK energy systems.
Environmental
NIMBUS is designed to be an ambitious project with the potential to accelerate the transition to net zero by prolonging the life of assets by understanding their degradation better, improving their reliability and management through the introduction of new, granular data sources and consequently improving network asset design, investment and operations.
The CBA (Appendix 3) assumes a full RIIO-T2 refurbishment intervention on the overhead line and then models the whole life costing under two separate scenarios:
i. Inspection & Condition Assessments are undertaken in line with current policies and modelling capabilities. This scenario incudes:
a. Inspection & condition assessment of the whole OHL across the lifetime of the asset
b. Fittings only replacement after 20 years – whole circuit
c. Fault repair – once during the lifetime of the asset
d. Full OHL refurbishment of towers and replacement of fittings and conductor after 40 years
ii. Enhanced predictive modelling from NIMBUS, which, over time, influences changes to lifetime intervention policies. This scenario includes:
a. Inspection & condition assessment of the whole OHL across the lifetime of the asset, with 5-year reviews resulting in a risk-based approach that reduces the annual cost over the life of the asset.
b. Fittings only replacement after 15 years and 30 years – targeted replacement of highest wear fittings only
c. Fault repair costs avoided due to risk-based interventions
d. Targeted refurbishment of towers and replacement of fittings and conductor after 40 years
Based on the use of 2018/19 costings, the NIMBUS whole life cost assessment shows a net NPV reduction of ~4.5% when compared with the baseline approach
The CBA will be further developed in the Alpha Phase
