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NIMBUS, a partnership with SSEN Transmission, SSEN Distribution and Icebreaker One is an ambitious project with the potential to accelerate the transition to net zero by prolonging the life of assets, improving their reliability and management through the introduction of new, granular data sources and improvements to network asset design, investment and operations.

Thorough analysis of sector needs for improved network asset methodologies for the design, maintenance and decision-making of electricity assets, NIMBUS has developed a business-driven use case to be demonstrated in Alpha, delivered the objectives of our Discovery proposal and met the SIF Innovation challenge aims.

Icebreaker One has undertaken an analysis of sector and user needs for improved asset risk methodologies for the design, maintenance and decision-making of electricity network assets to develop a business-driven use case to be demonstrated in the Alpha, next phase of NIMBUS. 

Weather conditions are known to accelerate the wear-and-tear on assets but little research has been done to understand how this can be quantified. The primary use case seeks to explore and quantify this by using data about the weather experienced by the asset with the asset’s service history to identify key weather factors that should be considered in Probability of Failure calculations within the industry-adopted methodologies. 

Key benefits include:

  • Economic: The business-driven use case developed in NIMBUS discovery will reduce the costs of penalty due to network downtime, improve grid connectivity and avoid high-risk/urgent repair operations for the Transmission Network Operators and Distribution Network Operators subject to regulatory requirements of keeping the network running and delivering power to the end customer. The ability to forecast asset degradation more accurately enables a risk-based approach to condition assessment that has the potential to reduce assessment frequency (and therefore cost of assessment) for low-risk assets.
  • Resilience: The use case will enable better asset resilience by improving the accuracy of grid-wide risk scoring within the asset risk models and methodologies used within the UK energy systems.
  • Environmental: NIMBUS is designed to be an ambitious project with the potential to accelerate the transition to net zero by prolonging the life of assets by understanding their degradation better, improving their reliability and management through the introduction of new, granular data sources and consequently improving  network asset design, investment and operations. 

NIMBUS has far-reaching impacts and applicability across the sector with its intentionally narrow scope to ensure achievability. The principles, methodologies, and tools developed and tested will produce guidelines for how the sector can reuse this analysis and enable these processes and analyses to be retooled for different assets.