Project Summary: The Storm Hardening Distribution Circuits Program is designed to mitigate the impact of storms on the client’s customers by reducing customer interruptions during a storm event. By hardening mainline distribution circuits, customers will either avoid losing power or the duration of outages will be reduced due to less damage in need of repair. The initial phase of the project entailed identifying circuits most in need of hardening. The program analyzed all overhead mainline storm events during the past three years, then located damage points on each circuit impacted and prioritized the circuits based on customer interruptions per overhead mile. Circuits were then ranked in order of priority, with the circuit with the most interruptions being ranked highest priority. The initial prioritization effort identified 60 circuits and approximately 163 miles as promising candidates for mitigation. Further prioritization efforts have identified an additional 22 circuits resulting in 81 circuits and around 207 miles as promising candidates for mitigation under the program.
There are several areas for cost savings and reliability benefits that can be attributed to the program which include the following:
K&A Scope: K&A’s scope of work included assessing damaged circuits and prioritizing them in order of need. Following this step, K&A identifies mitigation candidates. In addition to the prioritization and mitigation, K&A also provided our client with the following efforts:
