AWARDS FINALIST: Powerco – Connecting communities now and in the future
Powerco is using technology and fresh thinking to help improve the resilience, reliability, and safety of the gas and electricity services it provides to more than 900,000 Kiwis.
It sees its role as keeping communities on its network connected – now and in the future – and to help the country make the most of its transition to renewable energy.
To improve safety, in the past year the company has partnered with equipment providers ElectroNet and Eneida to test if low-voltage monitors can detect whether – in a lines down situation – high-voltage lines might still be energised from downstream transformers.
It has also developed an innovative ArcGIS tool to map NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi crash data onto its own network to identify high-risk poles and potential crash sites. Eighty-six high-risk sites were investigated during the past year with poles either moved, cables put underground, barriers installed around poles, or speed humps added.
To improve resilience, Powerco modelled vulnerabilities of power supply to more than 140 community emergency hubs on its footprint, enabling it to prioritise resilience solutions. Options include network strengthening, installing Base Power units, or cross over switches for back-up generators. About $13 million has been budgeted for work at 40 sites during the next seven years.
Vegetation
To improve reliability, Powerco says it is also looking for new ways to help reduce line damage from falling trees or broken branches during storms.
It has combined satellite imagery, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to optimise vegetation management – creating cost-effective risk plans that address immediate needs and use growth rates and fault trends to identify longer-term vegetation risks.
The company is also firmly focused on delivering cost-effective and future-proofed solutions.
Earlier this year, Powerco announced its first agreements to investigate biogas, bringing the energy sector together with the agricultural, manufacturing, and waste sectors to create economic and environmental benefits by developing renewable natural gas.
Load management
The company also partnered with solarZero to provide support to Powerco’s Coromandel network when demand risks outstripped capacity.
Powerco says the virtual power plant is made up of a network of community-based smart energy storage and solar generation systems on homes across the region, providing a lower-cost option to maintain network reliability, without investing in more power poles and lines.
A new fibre-optic cable in the region, installed to enable real-time network monitoring, has also been provided at reduced cost to Powerco customers.
Spare cable capacity has been sold to Chorus, which benefits from being able to move more data between its exchanges in the region.
Powerco says its initiatives are paying off – delivering a lift in customer satisfaction during the past year, its safest year ever, its best SAIDI results since 2014, and completion of 96 per cent of its planned maintenance programme.
The Energy Distributor of the Year category is sponsored by Axos Systems.