Endeavour Energy wins Energy Networks Australia 2022 industry award for Australian first innovation

Endeavour Energy has been awarded the Energy Networks Australia (ENA) 2022 Industry Innovation Award for its ground-breaking Australian first use of an engineering grade digital twin to improve customer outcomes during extreme weather events.

Delivered in partnership with leading software developer Neara, the digital twin has revolutionised Endeavour Energy’s response to critical emergency events by accurately identifying clearances between rising floodwaters and powerlines from the office rather than onsite inspections, freeing up field resources to perform other critical functions.

“I’m really proud of our team in pioneering this new approach to improving customers lives,” said Endeavour Energy’s General Manager Data Analytics and Insights Marat Bliev.

“As the electricity network that supplies safe, reliable, and affordable power to over 2.6 million people living and working in Sydney’s Greater West, the Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands, Illawarra, and the South Coast of NSW, we’re seeing increased frequency of floods, storms and bushfires.

“The digital twin has been successfully deployed during four successive record-breaking floods on NSW’s Hawkesbury River, enabling a safer and faster recovery.

“During flood recovery, the digital twin allowed us to maintain safe clearances between the flood waters and our high voltage network in conjunction with a purpose-built inspection app to provide real-time feeds back to control centres coordinating the on-ground inspection and repair works by both Endeavour Energy staff and third-party contractors.

“This enabled us to quickly inspect and restore flooded properties, dramatically improving the time to restore essential electricity supplies to flood-affected customers so they could start rebuilding their lives and communities.”

Jack Curtis, Neara’s Chief Commercial Officer, added “We are thrilled that Endeavour Energy has been recognised for their industry leading innovation in digital disaster response. At Neara, we are focused on enabling our customers to navigate the ever-increasing challenge of an unstable climate. Supporting the safety and reliability of critical infrastructure for the millions of people that rely on it every day is key to this work, particularly when threatened by extreme weather events.”

As a finalist in the ENA’s consumer engagement award, Endeavour Energy’s work application was recognised for its healing impact of grass roots engagement helping NSW South Coast communities recover from the devastation of the 2019-20 megafires.

“The devastation caused by the megafire meant we had to remove 170,000 bushfire damaged trees to keep the community safe and power supply resilient,” Mr Bliev said.

“Initially the community didn’t trust us, however, involving them in the process through our collaborative grassroots engagement led to a significant shift in understanding on both sides. After working together, they became our voice within the community.

“I’m incredibly proud of the work of our people to embrace innovation and build capacity in our engagement with local communities to deliver better customer outcome,” Mr Bliev said.

Media contact: Peter Payne 0409 664 608 peter.payne@endeavourenergy.com.au

Background

The Innovation Award recognises leadership in the design, development, and application of ground-breaking smart solutions to deliver better outcomes for customers.

The flood modelling within Endeavour Energy’s network Digital Twin provides a virtual flood overlay across the modelled 3D network. This innovation was leveraged to improve public safety and restoration response times to several floods in the Hawkesbury region over 2021-2022. It was used to model flooding using near real time river levels to obtain clearance levels of powerlines to floodwaters and network assets and premises likely impacted by water. This was supported with an inspection app bringing back real time information from the field to expedite restoration and improve coordination between teams and partners.

The Consumer Engagement Award is awarded in partnership with Energy Consumers Australia to recognise an Australian energy network business that demonstrates outstanding leadership in consumer engagement that build customers’ level of trust and confidence in the energy sector. Endeavour Energy was a finalist in this category, with the winner being AGN, AusNet Services and MGN for their joint nomination Three Businesses, One Engagement Program for Victorians.

Endeavour Energy’s application After the Fire was centred oncommunities on the NSW South Coast that were devastated by the 2019-2020 megafires, which burned across 45% of Endeavour Energy’s network area, destroying an estimated 168 million trees, devasting flora and fauna, and traumatising whole communities in the process. After power was safely restored, approximately 170,000 bushfire affected trees required removal to keep motorists and residents safe. Endeavour Energy engaged with the community in a collaborative way resulting in a community planting day in April 2022 where staff and their families joined the local community in a community planting day. The success of this project has become a case study feeding into our 2025 Nature Positive target which launched in June 2022 as part of our Sustainability Strategy.

About Endeavour Energy

• Supplies safe, reliable and affordable power to over 2.6 million people living and working in Sydney’s Greater West, the Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands, Illawarra and the South Coast of NSW
• Independently rated the most efficient DNSP in NSW, with reliability of 99.999%
• Customer base spans over 25,000 square kilometres and is made up of more than 430,000 power poles and streetlight columns, 202 major substations and 32,600 distribution substations
• Connected by nearly 60,600 kilometres (more than the distance from Sydney to London and back) of underground and overhead cables
• Integrates with renewable energy sources including 200,000 residential solar connections, industrial solar and embedded large-scale batteries.
• www.endeavourenergy.com.au

About Neara

Neara is a cloud-based engineering analytics platform that delivers a true digital twin for utilities to tackle their most complex problems. Neara converts raw data into a 3D interactive model in a physics-enabled environment. This allows utilities to perform complex engineering analysis, run scenario simulations such as extreme weather events, and assess risks. Through large scale analysis and actionable insights, utilities can optimize the performance of their whole-of-network and network assets. Founded in 2016 in Sydney, Australia, Neara’s mission is to bring safety and resiliency to global energy infrastructure in an increasingly unstable climate. For more information visit: www.neara.com