A case study of applying a novel asset maintenance optimization methodology to electricity distribution utilities using simulation strengthened analytics

Power Utilities are among the most capital-intensive industries in the world, where even modest improvements in asset maintenance and capital investment scheduling can potentially lead to very large annual cost savings in the order of millions. Such an improved scheduling model requires reliable asset condition data, historical asset data, SCADA data, etc. However, lack of sufficient visibility into the asset condition and insufficient, disjointed or mismanaged historical data records are the major challenges for this improved asset management solution.In this paper an integrated electrical and optimization model will be presented, which optimizes the asset maintenance and capital investment schedules. Preliminary results have been achieved and tested on realistic data for optimizing transformer maintenance in the Netherlands. The results have shown that this approach can provide visibility into asset conditions, conduct forward-looking what-if analysis for better grid planning, and reduce the operating costs including the cost associated with asset failure significantly. This can translate to multi-million dollar savings in operational costs under a fixed asset management budget.