With a unified system and a single network model, we have reduced the time and effort required to maintain our systems and have dramatically reduced outage durations.
The Challenge
Enova Power Corp. (formerly Waterloo North Hydro) was looking for a single platform for their ADMS needs to improve operator efficiency and customer satisfaction. They were wary of the hassle of managing multiple systems with differing requirements and incompatible data formats.
In particular, the company wished to reduce their outage response time from their manual restoration standard of 5–10 minutes to under 60 seconds by isolating the direct cause of the outage and automating restoration for the remainder of the network.
The Solution
Following a successful pilot project, Waterloo North Hydro’s system-wide rollout commenced in March 2019, phasing in large numbers of feeders on the network over time until the company could set all feeders to automatic mode in January 2020.
With the addition of SurvalentONE FLISR, the company achieved its objective to reduce its response time from 5–10 minutes for restoration of power to the unaffected areas to well under a minute. The company also noted that its reliability improved by an average of 10–20% in customer minutes saved per outage.
Altogether, Waterloo North Hydro notes that FLISR led to a 33% decrease in Customer Minutes of Interruption (CMI) in 2021 which, in turn, saved more than 1.357 million minutes of customer interruption for the Waterloo, Woolwich and Wellesley areas. The utility is continuing to deploy FLISR and ADMS throughout its service territory to expand the benefits of the project.
Before merging to form Enova Power Corp, Waterloo North Hydro was the electric distribution utility for the city of Waterloo, Wellesley and Woolwich areas. It served 59,000 commercial and residential customers and managed a peak load of 285MW.
