mPrest, a mission-critical monitoring, control and Big Data analytics software leader for the Internet of Energy market, has announced the release of its Underground Residential Distribution (URD) Cable Fleet Maintenance Optimization application, a new smart power system for hard to access, sensor-less URD cables that minimises asset failure and decreases the frequency of power outages.
URD cable fleet maintenance is a daunting and critical task – utilities maintain thousands of miles of URD cables, most of which were installed decades ago. Moreover, since these cables are sensor-less, utilities have limited visibility into their health condition. Furthermore, in many cases these cables may be buried directly in the ground, with no ducts; thus increasing their replacement costs. Lack of insight into cable survivability makes it difficult to prioritise maintenance and replacement activities, predict impending failures and take proactive steps to prevent those failures.
mPrest’s new AI-driven maintenance optimisation application takes a statistical approach and is based on troves of various data related to the URD cables. Several key influencers are analysed in order for mPrest to create a smart, Big Data-driven plan for the utility entity, such as cable vendor, location and other cable characteristics, installation date, soil type, humidity and more.
“The ability to predict the health of sensor-less URD cables is revolutionising the energy industry and bringing legacy utilities into the digital era,” said Ron Halpern, Chief Commercial Officer of mPrest. “Utilities can now use actual hard data to create optimal plans for power grids, predict asset failure, monitor asset health and prevent power outages before they occur – ultimately saving themselves and their consumers’ money while vastly improving service.”
mPrest’s URD Cable Fleet Maintenance Optimization system extracts URD cable segment data from platforms such as enterprise asset management, work and asset management, EAM and/or GIS. Using a self-learning model, it discovers key factors affecting the performance and survivability of URD cables and predicts the probability of cable segment failure.
mPrest enables utilities to use a proactive cable health management system that will reduce URD cables maintenance cost by four to seven times as compared to reactive asset health management. By utilising mPrest’s proactive management ‘system of systems’ utilities can decrease the financial burden of URD cable failure, increase system reliability and maintain brand reputation and regulatory relationships.
mPrest’s URD Cable Fleet Maintenance Optimization application is already in production in North America and said application is extended to additional similar sensor-less, hard to access assets, such as distribution transformers and others.
