How AusNet is mitigating storm risk

As the climate changes, effective management of weather-related risks is becoming more and more complex, with increasing financial, operational and regulatory impacts across a variety of industries.

For this reason, electricity distribution and transmission provider AusNet has selected DTN, a global data, analytics and technology company, to help improve its outage response management.

DTN Storm Impact Analytics applies sophisticated machine learning models using a combination of the company’s historical outage and weather data, along with other impact data such as vegetation and geography, and the utility’s specific risk thresholds, to create a tailored weather risk and response based on real-time weather forecasts. Specific to a utility’s infrastructure and distribution network, critical insights are available well before a weather event.

“After two major disaster events — the 2019/2020 bushfires and June 2021 storms — we knew we had to change how we responded to big emergency events in Australia,” said AusNet Emergency Operations Specialist Sally Jacobs.

“We needed reliable and actionable insights which looked at the potential impacts to our service areas, tailored to our industry. DTN Storm Impact Analytics enables us to more confidently anticipate and respond to weather impacts on our network.”

These planning insights inform both advanced warning and scenario modelling that provides incident commanders with the confidence to decide when a response is needed, and if so where to allocate and stage engineers in optimal places, so that they are positioned and equipped to request additional crews, monitor the situation or resolve a particular issue.

“Utility companies are committed to improving service and seeking solutions that can help them adapt to environmental threats,” said Nic Wilson, DTN Director of Product Management – Weather Risk. “AusNet is furthering their commitment by investing in innovative technology that improves their responses to unplanned outages and restores power as quickly as possible for Victorians.”

Storm Impact Analytics is part of the DTN Storm Risk solutions suite for energy companies. DTN said its outage planning and response platforms and weather intelligence application programming interfaces (APIs) are used by utilities around the world to help anticipate and manage weather incidents that put extreme pressure on the management of power grids. These solutions are tailored to support utilities of all sizes as they improve emergency preparedness and outage restoration planning.

Image credit: iStock.com/Andrew Robins