Improving Distribution Network Maintenance Process with Self-Driven Maintenance Actions by Contractor Partners

Abstract

Distribution system operators (DSO’s) are nowadays influenced by several factors that affects the development of their business. The whole society is today highly dependent of electricity which leads to increasing demand of reliability of supply and higher customer expectations. There are also ongoing large replacement investments projects of old aerial network with undergrounded weatherproof network in Finland. Most of these actions are done by external service contractors when DSO’s having only white-collar project supervision role.All these arguments drive distribution utilities to optimize their maintenance management process of their physical assets, by developing their maintenance activities more effectively and to fulfil the requirements also in a cost-effective way to allocate limited maintenance resources correctly.This paper presents self-driven maintenance management actions that Elenia has taken into action during past two years with regional contractor partners to improve distribution network maintenance process as well as to improve network reliability, quality of delivery and safety with optimal costs. This has been one of the first steps towards tactic partnerships between DSO and contractor partners.To enable fluent self-driven maintenance management process, the used ICT systems in Elenia are also further developed to ensure simple documentation also on the site. The used Network Information System (NIS) has developed maintenance part and the mobile solution for NIS is used for maintenance as well.