Project Summary

NIMBUS (Network Innovation and Meteorology to Build for Sustainability) will make meteorological data e.g., rainfall, wind speeds and temperature, available at an asset-specific level of detail, and usable by energy networks to improve the ability to model and predict the impacts of weather and climate change across the whole life of a network asset.

NIMBUS will reduce costs to consumers by extending the life of network assets, avoiding the costs of replacing assets early, and minimising costs of unnecessary interventions and emissions for maintenance. The outputs could also extend to other infrastructure providers such as transport and telecommunications.

Innovation Justification

Challenge: Improving energy systems resilience and robustness.

Theme: Strengthening the UK’s energy system robustness to support efficient roll out of new infrastructure.

The partner requirements for the theme have been met by including SSEN-Distribution, providing an additional Energy network licensee with SSEN-Transmission.

NIMBUS will identify assets that are at low-risk of failure of degradation and therefore require less frequent assessment. This allows the allocation of resources more efficiently, reducing the frequency and cost of assessments for low-risk assets and allowing the prioritisation of high-risk assets for more frequent inspections. This also allows us to understand and model expected degradation with a higher degree of confidence, understanding patterns and timelines, and avoiding unexpected asset failures and network disruptions.

Discovery to Alpha Learning

Lessons learned and recommendations were reported in the Discovery Phase Technical Report/Recommendations Document and have been considered in the Alpha project plan.

There are projects that investigate extreme weather events; however, NIMBUS is focused on prevailing weather conditions with a view on how these might change through climate change.

Stakeholders 

NIMBUS was designed to centre open engagement and will continue to do so in Alpha. In Discovery, SSE and IB1 promoted NIMBUS through press releases, while IB1 shared project updates and sought feedback via their Website, LinkedIn, and Twitter. External input from UK Power Networks and SP Energy Networks was invited during the development of Discovery WP2 and WP3, exploring how climate and meteorological effects are considered by DNOs.

We furthered our understanding of the material challenges faced by the energy sector through stakeholder engagement, reaching 50+ participants via interviews/workshops. We considered user, market and societal needs, policy and regulatory issues, and operational/technical capabilities.

Innovative Aspects

Prevailing weather conditions are known to accelerate asset degradation, but little research has been done to understand how this can be quantified. The primary use-case explores and quantifies this by using historical weather data with the asset's service history to identify key weather factors that should be considered in the ‘Probability of Failure’ calculations within the industry-adopted methodologies.

The use-case is innovative as it seeks to improve risk modelling for individual assets so TSOs and DNOs can understand weather and climatic consequences on their assets' health, functionality, and resilience, using new data sources and methodologies, with clear benefits and cost-savings.

TRL/IRL/CRL

Changes in current and estimated TRL, IRL and CRL for the innovation at the end of Alpha Phase are:

TRL – start Alpha=1, end Alpha=5, end Beta=7

IRL – start Alpha=1, end Alpha=3, end Beta=6

CRL - start Alpha=2, end Alpha=3, end Beta=7

Size and Scale

The use-case and proposed Alpha proof of concept are intentionally narrow in scope to ensure achievability. The principles, methodologies, and tools developed and tested will produce guidelines for how other organisations within the sector can reuse this analysis, and how these processes and analyses can be retooled for different assets.

SIF Funding

The innovative nature of Nimbus means it cannot be funded through business-as-usual activities as there is no certainty of success. Additionally, the Project aims to accelerate net-zero, while delivering net benefits to consumers which is the fundamental purpose of SIF. 

Counterfactual/Options:

Without NIMBUS, meteorological data would not be considered when determining an assets anticipated end of life. Other options were considered, including:

·         Immediate and forecast weather events for a more accurate storm response to events in progress. However, this is already closely monitored by operational teams and not as innovative as it would aid in reactionary work, rather than proactive.

·         Exceptional events including wildfires/landslips impacting assets. While these events do happen, they are rare and unlikely to drive as much benefit as the chosen option.

Impacts and Benefits

NIMBUS fulfils a clear user need, utilises new data sources and methodologies, with clear benefits and cost-savings to consumers.

For the preliminary cost benefit analysis (CBA) NIMBUS whole life cost assessment shows a net NPV reduction of ~4% when compared with the baseline approach. This NPV reduction significantly increases when the original capital costs of the asset are excluded from the calculation.

The CBA (using the Ofgem RIIO-T2 CBA Template) shows the potential benefits of NIMBUS, using average T1 costings and estimated NIMBUS benefits. The CBA assumes a RIIO-T2 refurbishment intervention on the overhead line (OHL) and then models the whole life costing under two scenarios:

1. Inspection & Condition Assessments are undertaken in line with current policies and modelling capabilities. Including:

·         Inspection & condition assessment of the whole OHL across the lifetime of the asset

·         Fittings only replacement after 20 years – whole circuit

·         Fault repair – once during the lifetime of the asset

·         Full OHL refurbishment of towers and replacement of fittings and conductor after 40 years

2. Enhanced predictive modelling from NIMBUS which, over time, influences changes to lifetime intervention policies. Including:

·         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

·         Fittings only replacement after 15 and 30 years – targeted replacement of highest wear fittings only

·         Fault repair costs avoided, due to risk-based interventions

·         Targeted refurbishment of towers and replacement of fittings and conductor after 40 years

The key metrics used to track benefits are shown below:

Economic

The Discovery business-driven use case will reduce the costs of penalty due to network downtime, improve grid connectivity and avoid high-risk/urgent repair operations for network operators subject to regulatory requirements of keeping the network running and delivering power to the end customer. 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) for low-risk assets.

Lowering the number of interventions, the scale of them and enabling new, more efficient technologies will also generate savings, potentially translating into savings for customers.

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.

Accurate forecasting will help us understand our network better, as well as new failure patterns. We can then focus our interventions enabling longer life cycles, reduced maintenance requirements and therefore lower environmental impact. By being more strategic, replacing high-risk, inefficient assets with more sustainable alternatives, we can make significant progress towards carbon zero targets.

Environmental

NIMBUS has the potential to accelerate the transition to net zero by prolonging the life of assets and reducing the requirement for interventions and temporary fixes. This reduces materials used and the number of contractor mobilisations, decreasing the carbon footprint. Also, as fewer interventions are needed, the impact on the landscape is minimised by avoiding disruption from site works.

Early failure detection and intervention will also allow better planning and therefore more time to invest in sustainable solutions. Instead of defaulting to carbon-intensive methods we can explore innovative technologies, materials and practices.

We propose to fully explore and quantify these consumer benefits during the Project Alpha Phase using the Ofgem RIIO-T2 CBA Template to model the Whole Life Cost to the consumer using current policies & methodologies against the perceived/modelled benefits expected to be delivered by application of NIMBUS.

No benefits have been realized through Project delivery to date.