Finland’s largest electricity company, Caruna, was founded in 2014 and invests more than EUR 100 million in its electricity network annually. A weather-proof electricity network is being built by optimizing investments.
Caruna has approximately 700,000 electricity distribution customers, an electricity network measuring almost 87,300 km, and, despite its relatively short operational time, long traditions. The company’s roots stretch back over 100 years to a place called Karuna. The electricity company has been through several phases and is currently the largest in Finland with a market share of approximately 20 percent.
Aiming for continuity of electricity supply
Society is becoming ever more dependent on electricity. At the same time, global warming fuels extreme weather events that can cause considerable damage to power lines. Caruna’s network suffered severe damage at the turn of the years 2011 and 2012, when large-scale winter storms ravaged Finland, causing trees to fall onto power lines.
The most destructive storms in decades led to significant public debate and spurred amendments to the Electricity Market Act. The aim is to ensure the continuity of electricity supply to consumers. In Finland, the maximum duration of an outage is now set at six hours in urban areas and 36 hours in other areas.
Investment efficiency is the key
Caruna invests over EUR 100 million annually to develop its electricity network. Despite the fact that the reliability of Caruna’s electricity distribution is over 99%, developing weather-proof network is worthwhile. Preventing outages from occurring pays off because fault repairing in bad weather conditions is very time-consuming and difficult.
“Investments that go into building weather-proof electricity network are optimized. This applies to all parts of the network,” says Sauli Antila, Caruna’s Development Director.
Carrying out investment projects in an efficient manner is of essential importance to Caruna’s projects. “Efficiency is realized by increasing the project size, making long-term investments in large-scale projects, and making maximum use of software solutions to support project management,” Antila sh2ays.
Cabling, vegetation analysis and network automation
Caruna develops weather-proof network on three fronts: by putting overhead lines underground in forest areas, by increasing the level of network automation, and by intensifying maintenance activities.
A significant proportion of the overhead lines in forests in sparse rural areas will be replaced with underground cabling. In addition, underground cabling will be used for almost all new parts of the electricity network.
“The areas where lines are placed underground will be prioritized in terms of the number of customers likely to benefit. Even with intense measures the cabling process can take years, so this is not a quick fix,” says Antila.
Electricity outages caused by heavy snow loads and gusts of wind can also be prevented by intensifying network maintenance activities. Aerial inspections in the line corridors in forests provides a clear indication of how close to the network the trees grow.
Increasing network automation does not reduce the number of outages, but it speeds up fault repair and enables fault areas to be isolated, which reduces the number of customers affected by the outage.
“The positive effects of increasing network automation become visible quickly and clearly but, as automation is employed to an ever greater extent, the potential benefit decreases,” Antila says.
Managing network assets and planning investments
Caruna improves the reliability of its electricity network with Trimble NIS, a network information system for carrying out planning and maintenance tasks. Caruna also adopted a solution for managing investment programs, as well as planning, monitoring and analyzing individual investment projects.
“Trimble NIS plays an important role in improving network reliability and managing network assets. That is why Caruna does not see the deployment project as an IT project but as a business development project,” Antila says. “Thanks to the rapid deployment schedule for the network information system, we were able to improve the efficiency of our asset management processes and ramp up planned investments as quickly as possible.”
Trimble NIS implementation project successful
The network information system rollout was carried out in waves and concluded in eight months in accordance with the planned schedule. “During the project period, a total of approximately 400 Caruna employees and employees of subcontractors were trained to use the new system,” says Mikael Mickelsson, Caruna’s Development Manager.
The implementation of the network information system was prioritized at Caruna. “The key factors that contributed towards the success of the project within the budget and very tight schedule were strong commitment of both parties to the delivery plan, the right people for the right roles, and Trimble’s software solutions,” says Mickelsson.
