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Case Study: Weather – Endeavour Energy

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Endeavour Energy’s network spans more than 60,000 km (37,655 miles) across a service territory of 25,000 sq km (9,653 sq miles); with more than 430,000 power poles and street columns, 207 major substations and 32,600 distribution substations. Millions of people in Sydney and Australia’s Greater West and beyond rely on Endeavour Energy to provide a safe and reliable electricity supply around the clock.

The Challenge

In March 2021 and subsequently March 2022, Greater Western Sydney was inundated by unprecedented 1-in-50-year floods, resulting in significant customer outages and damage to power infrastructure across Endeavour Energy’s network.

Endeavour Energy had already embraced digital technology to support business initiatives including capturing LiDAR and building a digital model of the network. At the time, the utility was using Neara’s platform to accelerate network design and fast-track line rating studies. However, as the flood emergency unfolded, the utility approached Neara for an urgent solution to diagnose and minimize the flood’s impact on customers, communities and network health.

The Solution

Endeavour Energy trusts Neara as their technology partner to support flood emergency response and resilience because of the platform’s ability to scale granular simulations across the entire network — empowering the Endeavor team to simulate and reflect live flood conditions onto a 3D engineering-grade network model means that the utility can precisely measure flood clearance risks both at a span-level and at a network-level.  

Together, the Endeavor and Neara teams moved fast and within 48 hours of expanding the engagement to support flood mitigation, activated a real-time rising floodwaters model reflecting live flood sensors and open-source government data.  Emergency response, control room, and planning teams leveraged the model to respond quickly to the critical period in strategically de-energizing parts of the network, accurately isolating electricity supply ahead of areas being inundated or where floodwater brought people too close to live power lines. 

As the flood water subsided, Endeavour Energy used Neara’s flood mapping functionality  to prioritize inspections to restore power to customers safely and quickly as well as understand potential hazards before sending emergency crews into flooded areas. As a result, the Endeavor Energy team was able to improve network reliability, restore power faster to affected communities, and eliminate 300 hours of manual inspection time. 

Scott Ryan, Chief Asset and Operating Officer at Endeavor Energy, said “We were able to simulate the impact of major flooding in the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers in late March to help restore power to affected customers in a safe and timely manner. Rather than wait for visual inspections after the floodwaters receded, we were able to reduce inspection times by digitally modelling the impacts. By using this technology, we eliminated 300 hours of inspection time and targeted our response to the customers that needed our assistance the most.”

Moving forward, Neara’s platform has enabled Endeavour Energy to precisely model the impact of future potential severe flood events on the network, customers and communities. This relies on ground topology data and water level data, which can be brought in and overlaid onto the network model. This enables Endeavour Energy to identify at-risk areas under different flood scenarios and perform appropriate grid hardening activities to bolster reliability and safety for its customers.

 

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