Electric cooperatives considering automated devices and processes to boost reliability have a new tool from NRECA to help them select distribution automation technologies and make the investment while protecting their bottom line.

“Distribution automation is growing in significance as a solution for grid reliability, efficiency and power quality, but choosing the most cost-effective DA solution can be difficult,” said Ravindra Singh, NRECA senior principal for DA.

“NRECA’s new DA toolkit will assist co-ops in determining the right DA investment for their particular situation by weighing multiple business drivers and DA functions and providing specific year-by-year forecasts of costs and benefits.”

The toolkit, the first product of NRECA’s DA Initiative, is available for free to all NRECA members.

DA uses automated devices, sensors, communication systems and data analytics to enhance resiliency, reliability and safety amid the proliferation of behind-the-meter generation, smart consumer technologies and electric vehicles.

Co-ops can use the toolkit to learn which DA technologies or functions address specific reliability challenges, their annual benefits and costs and the year payback would begin.

The DA toolkit’s opportunity matrix allows co-ops to apply up to 15 business drivers, such as improving situational awareness, promoting efficiency or reducing peak demand, to 27 DA functions, including supervisory control and data acquisition system, load forecasting, predictive fault location and optimal load balancing. The toolkit shows synergies among a co-op’s existing DA functions and possible benefits from implementing others. It can calculate future load growth and inflation to provide the total costs and benefits of a DA function.

Co-ops that piloted the DA toolkit said it will prove pivotal in providing data-backed options to their boards.

“The NRECA toolkit presents all cost and benefit breakdowns that are easy to interpret,” said Paul Brugh, electrical engineer at FreeState Electric Cooperative. “Every calculation can be as customized to your system as the information you have available.”

The McLouth, Kansas-based co-op, which has 19,000 meters, 15 substations and 3,400 miles of 12.47 kV distribution line, has long thought about installing SCADA but found it “hard for us to justify,” he said.

Brugh used the DA toolkit to present a cost-benefit analysis to his senior management. It captured the initial capital cost “sticker shock” and the financial benefits of the investment starting in year seven.

“SCADA was on our radar for years. Due to constraints, we never moved forward,” he said. “We're in a position again to revamp that. This is going to absolutely kick-start it.”

The tool also can demonstrate how DA will save members’ money through greater efficiency. Operational savings from technology and process upgrades “has always been hard to show,” Brugh said. “Because this tool is very comprehensive, now we can do that.”

Brandon Fulcher, a geospatial data engineer at Cuivre River Electric Cooperative, also found the tool’s capability to “put a price tag” on DA projects “very useful to take to a decision-maker.”

“You can show the impact from getting things done quicker rather than just saying ‘Oh, we know it’s a good thing we need to get eventually,’” he said.

The Troy, Missouri-based co-op is looking at getting battery storage for peak shaving and employed the toolkit to calculate the full value of assets that it has or is in the process of acquiring, he said.

“You can show the decision-makers the connections and also give them a dollar value they can use for better decision-making,” he said. “That’s really powerful that you have this capability within the palm of your hand.”

For more information about NRECA’s Distribution Automation Initiative or the new toolkit, contact Ravindra Singh.