Minimizing life cycle costs while keeping the technical aspects in mind is one of the key factors of the optimization, and it plays an important role in your asset investment planning.
To open that up a bit more, the solution that Eero Saarijärvi has worked on actually allows you to choose what kind of a network you are aiming at, and whether you are interested solely in the construction costs or want to take into account the entire network life-cycle, considering, for example, the reliability, operating, and maintenance costs. The most optimal network, of course, is the one designed for the entire life cycle.
Eero Saarijärvi received his M.Sc.Degree in Electrical Engineering in 2008, and completed his D.Sc. in 2013. Building on his studies, he’s been prototyping network optimization at Trimble since 2014.
It all gets started by considering the underlying network topology, that is, for example, selecting which connections to include in the final network. “So whatever we do with the network”, Eero explains, “whether it’s selecting some lines in between substations, switching devices or open points, all those decisions have broad impacts over the network, and we always base them on minimizing the life-cycle costs.”
You can place open points into the network in minutes.
“So for the internodal connections, we figure out which substations – both primary and secondary – should be connected with each other. For each of these connections, then, we make a selection between alternative line types, such as overhead lines or underground cables,” Eero continues.
However, our solution isn’t just about routing in terms of the life-cycle costs. Eero also emphasizes the importance of doing dimensioning for the lines with the in-built load flow calculation. “We can make use of the results so that the outcoming network fulfills the technical constraints, such as ampacity, voltage drop.”
Adding switches hasn’t been forgotten, either. “We consider three different kinds of switches: manual disconnectors, remote disconnectors and reclosers. They will each be placed in the network in terms of optimal costs, always,” Eero continues, and adds: “For the resulting network, we also consider the normal open points.” When Eero demos network generation, it becomes obvious that Network Optimizer really does place both the switching devices and open points into the automatically generated network in minutes!
