How Oniqua Can Help Transmission and Distribution System Owners

A medium-sized investor-owned utility that owns both a high-voltage transmission system and urban distribution systems, for example, could benefit greatly from the Oniqua Analytics Suite (OAS). Many of the far-flung assets owned by utilities like these have undergone upgrades or expansion in the last 20 years in response to load growth and other demands. But much of these utilities’ infrastructures are likely to be 50 years old, or even older. While these aging assets have performed historically at a high level of reliability, their increased use in applications for which they were not originally designed (e.g., wholesale wheeling, high power quality requirements) has forced more recent upgrades on lines and at substations.

Improving some of the business systems used at utility facilities, especially procurement and inventory systems, would be a logical complementary project to these upgrades. Operating largely unchanged for many years, inventory and procurement systems at many utilities have relied on long-standing recommendations from local suppliers, informal communication with T&D maintenance personnel, and the experience of buyers. Oniqua can improve the efficiency of these legacy systems.

In a situation like this, Oniqua recommends an initial meeting with a team of cross-disciplinary utility personnel (e.g., directors of operations, maintenance, and procurement) to agree upon goals, identify opportunities for improvements in procurement and inventory procedures, and specify the tasks and approaches needed to attain these improvements. After approximately a three-month set up and break-in period, the utility is likely to begin realizing business and operational benefits, such as the following:

• The utility will restock more efficiently the replacement parts critical to T&D system reliability, and avoid restocking parts not crucial to reliability (reducing inventory costs).
• Corporate accountants will write off surplus and obsolete stock.
• Use of automation will reduce time spent managing the spares inventory for the T&D system.
• Based on a series of criteria defined in the project, the team will stop conducting business with poorly-performing vendors and rely on high performance vendors, improving the delivery service levels of T&D equipment suppliers.
• The utility will consolidate purchases and optimize use of vendor-held stock and consignment arrangements.

Overall, power system reliability is likely to actually increase, while the size and cost of the spares inventory will decrease. Based on metrics gathered in the first year, most projects like this one pay for themselves in less than 12 months. After the initial procurement and inventory implementation, most utilities are likely to be so pleased with this performance – and the rapid implementation without significant disruption – that they will go on to implement the maintenance and reliability modules of the Oniqua solution as well.