The Client
Transpower New Zealand Limited (TPNZ) is the state-owned enterprise responsible for owning and operating the transmission network in New Zealand.
Transpower provides the infrastructure and market systems that connects electricity generators to major electricity users and distribution networks that deliver electricity to homes and businesses around New Zealand.
Their Needs
As part of Transpower’s operations and maintenance strategy the asset condition and life cycle of all their assets are monitored to enable replacement or upgrade planning to be undertaken. Transpower has 12000+km of overhead assets from 400kV to 66kV. The majority of its 110kV and 66kV overhead assets are supported on pole structures.
Transpower has an on-going program for repair, refurbishment and replacement of these pole structures. The majority of these pole structures are timber and concrete.
Groundline has an on-going contract, currently in it’s 6th year, with Transpower to manage the design aspects of this pole program, and this has included assessing standard foundation and pole designs on the network.
What We Did
As part of this on-going pole replacement program, we assess the structural integrity of all poles based on condition assessment reports and site-specific loading. As part of this program, we also assessed standard designs to determine whether they were still valid against current design codes.
This included standard foundations and structures.
Due to the large variance in structure designs on Transpower’s network, we identify those that can be optimized to reduce the number of structure types in the design suite.
The Results
This pole program provides Transpower crucial data that feeds into their internal asset planning but has also been able to reduce the number of custom designs on the network, which has had a flow-on effect of minimizing stock levels and aiding in the logistics and procurement space.
