Proving the business benefits to vegetation management and ESQCR

Scottish Power (an Iberdrola company) operates two networks: one in Southern Scotland serving 2 million customers; another in North Wales serving 1.5 million customers – covering a total of 40,000 km².

With ageing assets and extreme weather, Scottish Power wanted to know how the ROAMES® Virtual World Asset Management (VWAM) technology could help sustainably manage their assets, risk, and expenditure.

An Innovation Funding Initiative (IFI) project allowed an initial evaluation in Wales. Fugro ROAMES®’ cloud computing and algorithms delivered a complete, accurate 3D virtual model of Scottish Powers network assets, with every pole, conductor, tree and building. Through the ROAMES® cloud-based portal, SPEN’s engineers could assess and monitor the network from their desks, producing key analytics and reports on condition and performance.

Geoff Murphy, Scottish Power Energy Networks Technology Development Manager, said: “SPEN has established confidence in ROAMES® and that there is a strong potential for it to deliver a positive cost benefit.”

From July 2015, SPEN’s Network Innovation Allowance (NIA) deployed ROAMES® over 13,200 circuit kilometres (one third) of their overhead line (OHL) network – previously inspected labour-intensively and subjectively.

Geoff Murphy says ROAMES®’ “expected main benefits are faster, more accurate and frequent inspections that provide the pertinent information currently obtained by manual inspections but with additional advantageous information.”

Key Objectives:

• Quantify business benefits of ROAMES®’ Virtual World Asset Management

• After positive Cost Benefit Analysis, facilitate the switch to business as usual

• Integrate VWAM into existing corporate systems and policies

• Maximise and quantify the additional business benefits

• Identify future enhancements to VWAM systems