Endeavour Energy wins Energy Networks Australia 2022 Industry Innovation Award

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Endeavour Energy Wins Energy Networks Australia 2022 Industry Innovation Award

SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA
23 September 2022

Endeavour Energy has been awarded the Energy Networks Australia (ENA) 2022 Industry Innovation Award for its ground-breaking Australian first use of an engineering grade digital twin to improve customer outcomes during extreme weather events.

Delivered in partnership with leading software developer Neara, the digital twin has revolutionized Endeavour Energy’s response to critical emergency events by accurately identifying clearances between rising floodwaters and powerlines from the office rather than onsite inspections, freeing up field resources to perform other critical functions.

“I’m really proud of our team in pioneering this new approach to improving customers lives,” said Endeavour Energy’s General Manager Data Analytics and Insights Marat Bliev.

“As the electricity network that supplies safe, reliable, and affordable power to over 2.6 million people living and working in Sydney’s Greater West, the Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands, Illawarra, and the South Coast of NSW, we’re seeing increased frequency of floods, storms and bushfires.

“The digital twin has been successfully deployed during four successive record-breaking floods on NSW’s Hawkesbury River, enabling a safer and faster recovery.

“During flood recovery, the digital twin allowed us to maintain safe clearances between the flood waters and our high voltage network in conjunction with a purpose-built inspection app to provide real-time feeds back to control centers coordinating the on-ground inspection and repair works by both Endeavour Energy staff and third-party contractors.

“This enabled us to quickly inspect and restore flooded properties, dramatically improving the time to restore essential electricity supplies to flood-affected customers so they could start rebuilding their lives and communities.”

Jack Curtis, Neara’s Chief Commercial Officer, added “We are thrilled that Endeavour Energy has been recognized for their industry leading innovation in digital disaster response. At Neara, we are focused on enabling our customers to navigate the ever-increasing challenge of an unstable climate. Supporting the safety and reliability of critical infrastructure for the millions of people that rely on it every day is key to this work, particularly when threatened by extreme weather events.”

As a finalist in the ENA’s consumer engagement award, Endeavour Energy’s work application was recognized for its healing impact of grass roots engagement helping NSW South Coast communities recover from the devastation of the 2019-20 megafires.

“The devastation caused by the megafire meant we had to remove 170,000 bushfire damaged trees to keep the community safe and power supply resilient,” Mr Bliev said.

“Initially the community didn’t trust us, however, involving them in the process through our collaborative grassroots engagement led to a significant shift in understanding on both sides. After working together, they became our voice within the community.

“I’m incredibly proud of the work of our people to embrace innovation and build capacity in our engagement with local communities to deliver better customer outcome,” Mr Bliev said.

Media contact: Maddi Lindstrom maddi@neara.com

Background

The Innovation Award recognizes leadership in the design, development, and application of ground-breaking smart solutions to deliver better outcomes for customers.

The flood modeling within Endeavour Energy’s network Digital Twin provides a virtual flood overlay across the modeled 3D network. This innovation was leveraged to improve public safety and restoration response times to several floods in the Hawkesbury region over 2021-2022. It was used to model flooding using near real time river levels to obtain clearance levels of powerlines to floodwaters and network assets and premises likely impacted by water. This was supported with an inspection app bringing back real time information from the field to expedite restoration and improve coordination between teams and partners.

About Endeavour Energy
• Supplies safe, reliable and affordable power to over 2.6 million people living and working in Sydney’s Greater West, the Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands, Illawarra and the South Coast of NSW
• Independently rated the most efficient DNSP in NSW, with reliability of 99.999%
• Customer base spans over 25,000 square kilometres and is made up of more than 430,000 power poles and streetlight columns, 202 major substations and 32,600 distribution substations
• Connected by nearly 60,600 kilometres (more than the distance from Sydney to London and back) of underground and overhead cables
• Integrates with renewable energy sources including 200,000 residential solar connections, industrial solar and embedded large-scale batteries.
• www.endeavourenergy.com.au

 

For more information about Neara, visit www.neara.com or email info@neara.com.


About Neara

Neara is a physics-based platform that builds 3D interactive models of critical infrastructure networks and assets, providing the ability to run real-world scenarios, assess current and future risk, and prioritize maintenance and disaster response. Neara is focused on connecting industry knowledge and data with our digital twin technology to solve the complex problems facing infrastructure companies globally. We share our customers’ goals for safety and reliability, and are committed to their success by collaborating with them to realize sustainable value through our transformative solutions. Neara has offices in Australia, North America, and Europe. For more information visit www.neara.com.


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