Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie Success Story

PROJECT SUMMARY

Despite an aging asset portfolio, Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie
(HQT) must maintain service levels at the lowest possible cost
– requiring the organization to take the right actions at the
right time and find the right balance between equipment profitability, assumed risk and resource investments. Using the
DIREXYON modeling tool, HQT asset managers anticipate issues
associated with an aging transmission network, while making
the right strategic asset investment decisions.

• Over 4 million clients
• Nearly 40 asset types
• Over 800,000 individual assets
• Nearly 35,000 km / 22,000 miles
  of high-voltage power lines
• Over 500 substations
• Assets valued at over $20B

“An asset-focused approach that considers the complete lifecycle of each component
addresses the division’s strategic requirements and anticipates future needs in order
to achieve and maintain the desired performance.”

– Marie-Josée Roby, Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie

BACKGROUND

Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie (HQT) manages one of
North America’s most extensive electric power transmission systems, serving local populations and supplying
power to three Canadian provinces and four U.S.
States. Every year, HQT invests over $2B to maintain
its network and ensure its sustainability.

The organization must show its shareholder that, even
with an aging asset portfolio, its strategies deliver
network reliability at the lowest cost, and can be
implemented despite a shortage of qualified labour.

Based on their role within the network, assets must

meet certain standards that influence inspection,
maintenance and turnover strategies and costs. In
addition, when evaluating annual rate adjustment
requests, regulatory authorities demand exemplary
rigour, with results based on science and data.

RESULTS

• Now, Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie can identify the

• OPEX and CAPEX strategies that offer the best return

• on assets, while meeting required service levels and

• controlling risks. Thanks to the DIREXYON platform,

the organization is equipped to easily and quickly:
• Determine optimal intervention sequencing strategies (i.e., maintenance, repair/refurb, replacement)
  and the best policies to prioritize maintenance and
  investments
• Generate strategic maintenance and investment
  plans to make sure impacts of short-term decisions
  are evaluated in the long term
• Analyze the consequences of CAPEX and OPEX
  budget increases or cuts on risk and key performance indicators in the short, medium and long term
• Develop conclusive scenarios to guide strategic
  decision-making
• Document the internal asset management
  expertise using clear and intuitive models

CHALLENGES

Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie used its asset management expertise to develop several sophisticated
models to create, test and validate predictive trends
for sustainability and adaptive maintenance.

However, the systems available on the market were
not scaled to handle the huge volume of assets and
calculations required to fully simulate the portfolio’s
evolution over a 50-year period. In this context, standard modeling tools (i.e., Excel, MATLAB, Python, etc.)
were too limiting.

When working with a group of experts, the goal is to
instill a collaborative environment that lets each of
them contribute to projects. With this in mind, HQT
was looking for a centralized approach to formalize
its asset investment decision policies.

OUR SOLUTION

The DIREXYON platform is recognized by HydroQuébec TransÉnergie as a strategic, transparent
and proven tool to make the right organizationwide decisions in order to reach optimal reliability,
cost efficiency, risk management and governance.

The platform allows users to divide the network into
different asset categories, where each one is individually modelled using only “drag & drop” functionalities.
Not a single line of programming code is required.
The organization is empowered to independently
maintain and sustain the solution.

The DIREXYON platform also generates realistic
maintenance and investment scenarios at the lowest
possible cost, giving the organization’s internal
experts a clear picture of the relationship between
asset management policies, revenue requirements,
long-term performance and network reliability risks.

Internal expertise is digitized through the configuration
of intuitive decision trees, which all stakeholders
easily understand, assess and enhance.

Furthermore, numerous technical reports are now
automated.

Finally, because all simulation data is saved, the
platform is designed to meticulously reconstruct and
audit all calculations.

KEY REQUIREMENTS

To maintain required levels of service and simultaneously manage both cost and risk, while meeting all
stakeholder requirements, the solution must:

• Systematically test asset inspection, maintenance
  and renewal policies
• Produce reports that allow users to make short-,
  medium- and long-term projections for service
  levels and key indicators throughout the network,
  based on different scenarios
• Integrate risk and asset degradation evaluation
  models, as well as all intervention policies, for each
  asset category
• Integrate sophisticated work synchronization rules to
  generate realistic forecasts on upcoming projects
• Optimize investment and maintenance strategies,
  and adapt them to asset aging considerations
  based on multiple factors (i.e., risk, return, service
  level, budget, etc.)
• Generate a model to rigorously quantify the strategy’s impact on user rates, so these rates can then
  be justified to regulatory authorities