Quantifying SAIDI Reduction & Other Benefits of Line Sensors
The challenge
PG&E felt that line sensors could be instrumental in improving reliability statistics while supporting an increasing penetration of solar and electric vehicles. They wanted to quantify the achievable SAIDI savings from line sensors. PG&E secured CPUC funding and embarked on a comprehensive test to evaluate the reliability impacts of line sensors.
Download the whole story to see what they learned.
The test
In the field test, PG&E deployed almost 1,000 Sentient Energy line sensors, on numerous feeders throughout the distribution grid, and monitored the equipment’s performance for almost five quarters. The key conclusion from PG&E’s trials was that the business case for line sensors to improve SAIDI metrics is compelling. As the field trials showed, CMI (Customer Minutes Interrupted) could be reduced nearly 20%. PG&E’s team also identified a number of line sensor use cases with benefits beyond fault isolation and restoration. For example, high resolution oscillography of fault waveforms from Sentient Energy MM3s™ improved fault cause categorization, and indicated future failure risks such as issues with capacitor-bank operations.
Key Takeaways
12.6%
Reduction in patrol time
1,000
Sentient Energy sensors evaluated in field test
19.4%
Improvement in Customer Minutes Interrupted (CMI)
DERs
New ability to sense current direction and better manage DERs
