Losses Investigation
| Funding mechanism | Network Innovation Allowance (NIA) |
|---|---|
| Duration | Apr 2015 - May 2019 |
| Project expenditure | £2,580,000 |
| Research area | Safety, Health |
| Region |
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Objectives
1) Understand technical losses on the LV and HV network
2) Determine the minimum information to accurately predict network losses.
Problem(s)
Distribution Network Operators have an obligation to operate efficient and economic networks. As such the effective management of distribution losses is paramount. Current estimates put the technical losses at between 5.8% and 6.6% of electricity delivered (“Management of Electricity Distribution Network Losses” IFI report) worth approximately £900 million across the UK. Approximately £640 million of these losses occur after transformation down to 11kV.
Some improvements with clear cost benefits across the network are being rolled out, as outlined in WPDs losses strategy, however these are restricted to broad brush techniques due to a lack of detailed understanding of the distribution of losses across our network. As such reductions in losses cannot be targeted and the network cannot be optimised.
Method(s)
This project will fully monitor several LV and HV feeders to measure all the in-feeds and out-feeds to the networks. This will enable us to gain a much fuller understanding of flows on the feeders as well as determining network losses. We will also investigate the causes and effects of certain loss influencing parameters such as imbalance and power factor.
The monitored feeders will enable us to build a reference for different loss estimation models which will be developed using restricted data sets. These models will predict the losses using data such as customer types and circuit length and will be compared against the reference allowing us to understand the importance and value of the data. The comparisons will allow us to determine the minimum information needed to assess network losses accurately.