The path to data-driven holistic condition monitoring and maintenance optimization

Abstract:
With the strong expansion of renewable energy in the electricity mix and continued consumer demand, today's energy supply systems are under severe strain, while network expansion is not always able to keep pace. At the same time, time-based maintenance of assets will no longer be feasible in the future due to a shortage of skilled labour. This makes it all the more important to adapt maintenance strategies accordingly in order to maintain a high level of security of supply. This paper presents a novel approach that combines existing Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) concepts with monitoring data to enable cost-optimised and efficient network operation. In addition to monitoring data, this approach uses a variety of data sources and information to assess the health and risk of assets and facilities, enabling holistic maintenance optimisation. In particular, it describes the challenges that arise in the technical implementation of such a concept and presents possible solutions. The concept is tested in two real substa-tions in the transmission grid.