Aim. This project is aimed to investigate new satellite data analytics solutions via remote sensing that can help GB networks to improve understanding of the asset conditions, better allocate resources, prepare, and respond to extreme weather events. The final solution should significantly reduce the requirements for manual ground and aerial based monitoring. This would allow the GB transmission network to be better informed about the network conditions and more reliable while lowering emissions and costs associated with Operation & Maintenance activities. This is closely aligned with the Data and Digitalisation challenge’s aim to improve data monitoring, increase efficiency, reliability, security, and resiliency of networks.
The project meets the scope of the competition in following key areas:
- “How to improve the visibility of infrastructure and assets, for instance new digital infrastructure or novel uses of senor and communications technologies” The proposed solution will improve the visibility of the infrastructure and assets during normal operation as using satellite data that will increase the frequency of the assets surveys compared to current ground based methods.
- “How novel uses of data and digital platforms can significantly improve network planning, modelling and forecasting capabilities.” The satellite data can be improve the response to climate change effects like flooding, heavy rain, snow storm or wildfire and provide warning to the network companies for better planning and resource allocation.
Partners. The energy networks project partners NGET, NGGT and other GB networks will benefit from better visibility of the asset conditions, informed resource allocation in response to extreme weather event and fast event recovery, all it will improve the overall resilience and reliability of the networks. Cranfield University is a research expert in aerospace technologies will provide scientific support about future satellite technology development. Spottitt is a private sector organisation with expertise in satellite data analytics and digital technologies will evaluate available and future technologies that can benefit networks while European Space Agency (ESA) as a data owner will provide access to the satellite data.
Method. The project team will evaluate several potential applications of satellite data analytics for improving grid resilience. The deliverable of the project will include technical feasibility of the application as well as a cost benefit analysis against existing methods. In the future phases of the project the short-listed applications will be developed and tested to reach a sufficient readiness level to be implemented in the business as usual network operations.
Problem Bring Solved
Context. Energy infrastructure is vulnerable to natural hazards and extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent due to the impacts of climate change. In recent years Great Britain’s (GB) electrical network companies reported the declining resiliency margins available to maintain the grid stability, hence the chances of prolonged power outages are continuously increasing. When extreme events like flash flooding, heavy rain, snow storm, wildfire etc. occurs it is difficult to quickly assess the severity of damage using the existing manual inspection/surveying methods. Deploying specialised teams across large affected areas, sometimes in remote locations, incurs significant costs and safety risks for the technical personnel and equipment. Due to these reasons electrical power networks are less resilient to disruptions, faults or damage caused by climate change events, that have not existed when most of the network infrastructure was designed and built.
Problem. To maintain continues grid operation the electrical networks are required to inspect their network regularly for the purpose of power network’s condition monitoring, vegetation detection, heat loss, land subsidence, etc. Traditional methods used for inspection include field surveys and airborne surveys conducted by teams travelling “on foot” or by helicopters. The ground-based method is labour-intensive and the helicopter method has a limited detection rate due high costs for frequent surveys across entire network lowering the overall visibility of network assets’ conditions.
These existing manual inspection methods of electrical networks can be assisted and partly replaced by the use of remote sensing data available from earth observation satellites. Rapidly developing satellite data technology has a significant potential to enable new monitoring systems and tools. These can be used for direct detection of network damage, and for hazard risk response to enable more efficient deployment of resources.
Solution. The advantages of using remote sensing satellite data for transmission networks can be significant. Firstly, during normal operational time satellite data can be used to aid regular maintenance such as detection of vegetation or bird nests on/around the transmission towers, unauthorised construction, damaged power assets etc. Secondly, during a natural disaster, access to data about the location and effects can allow better and quick resource allocation to increase the resiliency of the power network. Thirdly, satellite data can be used to make predictive models for events that are not considered in the existing models that are based on historic data from pre-climate change era.
