Overhead renewal planning tool

As our network assets age, their condition and performance deteriorates. To make sure our customers continue to have a safe and reliable electricity supply, we renew these assets including conductors, crossarms and poles.

Prioritising which ones to replace depends on a range of factors including its material quality, environment, previous maintenance, current condition, fault history and more.

In response, we developed an Overhead Renewal Planning Tool (OHRPT), which combines all this different data to produce visualisations showing where network renewal is most needed.

The tool also uses information to help predict the potential impact of asset failure (and power outages) such as the number of customers that could be affected in the area.

Combined, all this information allows our engineers to balance trade-offs and target investment where it provides the greatest cost benefit and improved safety for our customers.

Ken Pattie, Overhead Renewals Manager, says the OHRPT has transformed the way our overhead planning engineers work.

“A task that previously took months can now be done in days, and rather than being subjective, our decisions are all based on the same logic and transparently available data. 

“Our renewal planning engineers can now prepare a significantly larger portfolio of planned renewal projects with longer lead times – starting planning two years in advance, compared to three months in advance like we used to (pre-CPP).

“Over time, these insights and change in strategy will improve safety and other outcomes for our customers. Also, projects are planned fully detailed ready for optimization and design.”