b'Partner News Spring 2023 17EnterpriseMore on MonitoringMonitoring solutions are becoming more widespread. By way of example, in Britain, there are 560,000 MV/LV substations. Ten years ago only a fraction of 1% were monitored. We are expecting this to rise to 4% by the end 2022, and 20% by 2028. Most of the 100,0000 monitoring deployments planned are expected to be prioritised for substations feeding multiple customers in denser urban areas, but all in support of the transition to net zero.Figure 1: Autodesign - a connections software tool developed by EA Technology for Northern Powergrid One such monitoring technology, now deployed at scale, is the VisNet Hub Data quality can be a problem in somedeveloped by EA Technology. With over areas, but the key is to work with what is6,000 installed in British substations (from available and seek to improve it, rather thanfirst installation in summer 2019), the wait for data perfection some years downsolution measures voltage and current on the line. There are various techniques thatevery LV circuit giving insight about load, can be applied to interpolate and makefaults, and circuit heath information across engineering judgements where there arethe network. It measures three phases, data gaps; which can then be checked andplus neutral for up to six Low Voltage confirmed as data improves.circuits, busbar voltage and equipment temperature, providing rich information Once the model is established, it can notFigure 2: ConnectMorea transport and network planningon the performance of the LV feeders and software tool developed by EA Technology for SP Energy only be used to ascertain where thereNetworks the distribution transformer. The VisNet might be network constraints today, but isHub utilises EA Technologys Low Voltage a powerful tool in analysing scenarios basedCommon Application Platform (LV-CAP) on changing customer profiles and newoperating system.connections of customer-side technology into the future, providing an indicationThis allows a network operator to deploy of future investment needs and wherea single hardware unit per substation, hotspots are likely to form.incorporating a tailored suite of Apps, analogous to a smartphone, rather than Beyond these internal uses though, manyhaving to deploy multiple devices in each network companies are beginning to sharesubstation with varying functionality and a version of this model with their customersdata protocols. via web portals. This allows customers to understand available capacity and to self-serve their connection requests for building a new property, or connecting a new charge point to the network, receiving a quote for this connection in a matter of minutes rather than by submitting an application to the network operator and waiting several weeks for the response. This not only improves customer satisfaction, but also reduces the burden on the connections department within the utility. Key to making this a success is presenting the complex engineering that lies in the background in a simple and intuitive format for users to understand and use. EA Technology has worked with several companies to realise this and examples can be found in the AutoDesign and ConnectMore applications which are live on Northern Powergrid and SP Energy Networks websites respectively. Figure 3: Typical VisNet Hub installation in distribution substation to monitor transformer and feeder demand'