Confidential Historian & Analytics ED2 Engineering Justification Paper ED2-NLR(O)-SPEN-002-SMS-EJP Issue Date Comments Issue 2 November 2021 Final Submission Scheme Name Historian & Analytics PCFM Cost Type NLR(O) Activity SMS Primary Investment Driver Operational Efficiency Reference ED2-NLR(O)-SPEN-002-SMS-EJP Output Type Digitalisation Strategy Cost £4.85m SPD – £2.76m SPM - £2.09m Delivery Year 2023-2028 Reporting Table C4 Outputs included in ED1 Yes No Business Plan Section Maintaining a Safe & Resilient Network Primary Annex Annex 4A.16: Operational IT and Telecoms Strategy Spend Apportionment ED1 ED2 ED3 £4.85m
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Confidential
Historian & Analytics ED2 Engineering Justification Paper
ED2-NLR(O)-SPEN-002-SMS-EJP
Issue Date Comments
Issue 2 November 2021 Final Submission
Scheme Name Historian & Analytics
PCFM Cost Type NLR(O)
Activity SMS
Primary Investment Driver
Operational Efficiency
Reference ED2-NLR(O)-SPEN-002-SMS-EJP
Output Type Digitalisation Strategy
Cost £4.85m SPD – £2.76m SPM - £2.09m
Delivery Year 2023-2028
Reporting Table C4
Outputs included in ED1 Yes No
Business Plan Section Maintaining a Safe & Resilient Network
Primary Annex Annex 4A.16: Operational IT and Telecoms Strategy
To be completed by the Service Provider or Asset Management. The completed form, together with an accompanying report, should be endorsed by the appropriate sponsor and submitted for approval. IP1 – To request project inclusion in the investment plan and to undertake project design work or request a modification to an existing project IP1(S) – Confirms project need case and provides an initial view of the Project Scope IP2 – Technical/Engineering approval for major system projects by the System Review Group (SRG) IP2(C) – a Codicil or Supplement to a related IP2 paper. Commonly used where approval is required at more than one SRG, typically connection projects which require connection works at differing voltage levels and when those differing voltage levels are governed by two separate System Review Groups. IP2(R) – Restricted Technical/Engineering approval for projects such as asset refurbishment or replacement projects which are essentially on a like-for-like basis and not requiring a full IP2 IP3 – Financial Authorisation document (for schemes > £100k prime) IP4 – Application for variation of project due to change in cost or scope PART A – PROJECT INFORMATION
Project Title: Historian and Analytics Project
Project Reference: ED2-NLR(O)-SPEN-002-SMS-EJP
Decision Required: To give concept approval for the project scope for continued support for a data historian, data visualisation and data analytic capability
Summary of Business Need: SPEN currently uses PI historian to record time series analogues from monitors. For historical reasons an in-house developed
solution, PSAlerts, is used to separately store SCADA event data. Both PI and PSAlerts will need a significant refresh or
replacement during ED2. They will also need to increase capacity to store LV and potentially Low Carbon Technology (LCT)
related information. This project will deliver a new historian solution which manages both events and time series data and
provides easier access to the data for analytics activities such as DSO load forecasting. To maximise the use of the data stored
in the historian in the provision of services, such as forecasting, we need to have an analytics environment capable of
manipulating a high volume of data in a short timeframe. The most cost-effective route to do this is leveraging flexible cloud-
based analytics environment. This will allow us to mix in-house and externally developed analytics flexibly. In addition, we
require visualisation of data to end users particularly for LV Management.
Summary of Project Scope, Change in Scope or Change in Timing: The scope of the project is to upgrade our historian functionality and closely integrate it with our analytics environment
2 Background Information .................................................................................................................................. 4
Rejected This would be the minimal investment strategy to maintain SPEN’s existing historian functionality with no additional analytics. This would be required to maintain some of our obligations for data sharing. With this solution, SPEN would be unable to maximise the use of the enhanced monitoring it is investing in deploying.
2 Deploy enhanced Historian & Analytics
Adopted This is the chosen option. This option would deploy enhanced historian functionality, that scales cost effectively and is fully embedded with our wider analytics capability.
4 Detailed Analysis & Costs
4.1 Selected Option Summary
PI is a trusted historian, but our current solution is out of date, moving out of support and
use is not maximised. This project would look at providing a solution which supports the
anticipated wider use of data and closely links it to an accessible analytics environment where
it can be readily associated with network models and other data sources to provide system
wide analytics for a broad range of use cases. During 2021, options for enhancing the Historian
and analytics solution are being evaluated, aligned with the global expert groups for data
management. Options include fully upgrading PI, utilisation of other existing solutions and
moving to a Cloud hosted service. This analysis is in preparation for deployment to start as
part of this project during ED2.
After evaluating several different Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) analytics solutions over
the past 3 years a dedicated cloud analytics environment is assessed to give SPEN access to a
cost effect solution which provides a wide range of tools so that even imperfect data can be
exploited to provide insights to network operations. As large-scale use of analytics is still a
relatively new area this provides the most scalable option and lowest risk of stranded/unused
assets. Our ongoing investment in data science skills also requires this environment for this
resource to be fully utilised.
In addition, this analytics base allows us to further enhance dashboards for visualising our LV
network to support our fault management and connections facilitation in this area. SPEN
currently has multiple network visualisation tools with varying functionality and usage levels
(Geofield, Geoview, UMV, ESRI, LView). This part of the project would look both at further
developing the LV visualisation capability put in place during in ED1 but also at how the
multiple visualisation options could be rationalised to support efficient operational processes.
This is the minimal investment option. The current historian solution licence is essentially out
of support and we cannot upgrade the current solution to take advantage of new functionality.
Hence, we also cannot scale cost effectively to support the anticipated data volumes as legacy
pricing mechanisms apply. Therefore, maintaining this solution would not be cost efficient as
is demonstrated by the options costing.
In addition, SPEN currently has no dedicated analytics environment and limited use of its
historian data in custom applications. Doing nothing would mean that investment in
monitoring could not be capitalised for longer term forecasting and planning.
4.3 Options Technical Summary table
# Option Technical Summary
1 Maintain existing system
Maintain the existing historian system, no analytics service. This is the “Do minimum” option.
2 Deploy enhanced Historian & Analytics (baseline)
Enhance our historian capability to include analogue and event information and deploy a flexible cloud-based analytics environment to maximise the use of recorded data.
4.4 Options Cost summary tables
# Option Cost Breakdown £m NARMs
Risk Change £/Risk
Maintain existing system
Maintain Historian Hardware/Software
£0.400
1 Licence for data tag capacity £3.097
Historian System support £0.950 Analytics & Visuals (not provided) £0 Total £4.447
2 Deploy Historian & Analytics (baseline)
Enhance Historian Hardware/Software
£1.188
Historian System support £0.395 Analytics Environment £1.150 Analytics Support £0.825 Visualisation Tools Development £0.250 Visualisation Tools Support £0.250 Visualisation Tools Rationalisation £0.750 Total £4.808* Total (Historian only) £1.583*
*The cost comparison shows the total costs for the “Maintain existing system” option with no
analytics service provided. To compare like for like with the chosen option “Deploy Historian & Analytics” a Historian only cost is shown in the table which indicates a new approach to historian
management as more cost effective.
All costs have been reviewed with SPEN IT and infrastructure teams. Hence, these costs are based
on both the best extrapolated estimate from the work carried out to date in these areas and from
current knowledge of technology availability and pricing.
Historian costs assume we transition to a largely cloud hosted solution by 2026.
5 Deliverability & Risk
5.1 Preferred Options & Output Summary
The baseline option is to evolve the Historian & Analytics solution to fully exploit collected
data and further augment this solution with a dedicated analytics environment. This provides
a more cost-effective historian solution in addition to the analytics and visualisation tools
required to meet our strategic goals in ED2.
These solutions will exist in ED1 and will be extended by procuring additional services during
ED2 i.e. we plan to maintain our existing Historian & analytics environments whilst we extend
or procure additional Software as a Service capabilities in these areas. This will mitigate the
risk of these solutions.
5.2 Cost Benefit Analysis Results
The cost benefit analysis for this area is detailed in ED2-NLR(O)-SPEN-002-SMS-CBA -
Historian Analytics – Issue 1.
Specific benefit values for this area are in the investment in platforms which will support
multiple specific business functions such as DSO, connections, predictive maintenance,
forecasting, etc. in a cost-effective way. Hence, double counting of these benefits needs to be
avoided.
The CBA for this paper is therefore based on savings achievable from a key early analytics
project, Phase ID. The savings in Phase identification are driven by CI/CML reductions due to
more accurate and earlier fault management. This is then extrapolated on basis that 2 projects
per year are delivered during ED2. It is assumed that these benefits justify historian storage,
analytics and visualisation capabilities.
Options considered
Decision Comment
NPVs based on payback periods 10
years 20
years 30
years 45
years Whole
Life NPV
Baseline: Deploy
enhanced Historian & Analytics
Adopted Enhance our historian capability to include analogue and event information and deploy a flexible cloud-based analytics environment to maximise the use of recorded data.
Option 1: Maintain existing system
Rejected Maintain the existing historian system, no analytics service