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July 6, 2022
Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie manages risk at the lowest possible cost thanks to innovative investment strategies in its critical assets.
PROJECT SUMMARY
- Over 4 million clients
- Nearly 40 asset types
- Over 800,000 individual assets
- Nearly 35,000 km / 22,000 miles of high-voltage power lines
- Over 500 substations
- Assets valued at over $20B
“An asset-focused approach that considers the complete lifecycle of each component addresses the division’s strategic requirements and anticipates future needs in order to achieve and maintain the desired performance.”
BACKGROUND
Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie (HQT) manages one of North America’s most extensive electric power transmission systems, serving local populations and supplying power to three Canadian provinces and four U.S. States. Every year, HQT invests over $2B to maintain its network and ensure its sustainability.
The organization must show its shareholder that, even with an aging asset portfolio, its strategies deliver network reliability at the lowest cost, and can be implemented despite a shortage of qualified labour.
Based on their role within the network, assets mustmeet certain standards that influence inspection, maintenance and turnover strategies and costs. In addition, when evaluating annual rate adjustment requests, regulatory authorities demand exemplary rigour, with results based on science and data.
RESULTS
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Now, Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie can identify the
OPEX and CAPEX strategies that offer the best return
on assets, while meeting required service levels and
controlling risks. Thanks to the DIREXYON platform,
the organization is equipped to easily and quickly:
- Determine optimal intervention sequencing strategies (i.e., maintenance, repair/refurb, replacement) and the best policies to prioritize maintenance and investments
- Generate strategic maintenance and investment plans to make sure impacts of short-term decisions are evaluated in the long term
- Analyze the consequences of CAPEX and OPEX budget increases or cuts on risk and key performance indicators in the short, medium and long term
- Develop conclusive scenarios to guide strategic decision-making
- Document the internal asset management expertise using clear and intuitive models
CHALLENGES
Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie used its asset management expertise to develop several sophisticated models to create, test and validate predictive trends for sustainability and adaptive maintenance.
However, the systems available on the market were not scaled to handle the huge volume of assets and calculations required to fully simulate the portfolio’s evolution over a 50-year period. In this context, standard modeling tools (i.e., Excel, MATLAB, Python, etc.) were too limiting.
When working with a group of experts, the goal is to instill a collaborative environment that lets each of them contribute to projects. With this in mind, HQT was looking for a centralized approach to formalize its asset investment decision policies.
OUR SOLUTION
The DIREXYON platform is recognized by HydroQuébec TransÉnergie as a strategic, transparent and proven tool to make the right organizationwide decisions in order to reach optimal reliability, cost efficiency, risk management and governance.
The platform allows users to divide the network into different asset categories, where each one is individually modelled using only “drag & drop” functionalities. Not a single line of programming code is required. The organization is empowered to independently maintain and sustain the solution.
The DIREXYON platform also generates realistic maintenance and investment scenarios at the lowest possible cost, giving the organization’s internal experts a clear picture of the relationship between asset management policies, revenue requirements, long-term performance and network reliability risks.
Internal expertise is digitized through the configuration of intuitive decision trees, which all stakeholders easily understand, assess and enhance.
Furthermore, numerous technical reports are now automated.
Finally, because all simulation data is saved, the platform is designed to meticulously reconstruct and audit all calculations.
KEY REQUIREMENTS
- Systematically test asset inspection, maintenance and renewal policies
- Produce reports that allow users to make short-, medium- and long-term projections for service levels and key indicators throughout the network, based on different scenarios
- Integrate risk and asset degradation evaluation models, as well as all intervention policies, for each asset category
- Integrate sophisticated work synchronization rules to generate realistic forecasts on upcoming projects
- Optimize investment and maintenance strategies, and adapt them to asset aging considerations based on multiple factors (i.e., risk, return, service level, budget, etc.)
- Generate a model to rigorously quantify the strategy’s impact on user rates, so these rates can then be justified to regulatory authorities
To maintain required levels of service and simultaneously manage both cost and risk, while meeting all stakeholder requirements, the solution must:
