Complexica Pty Ltd, a leading provider of Artificial Intelligence software for optimising sales, marketing, & supply chain activities, announced today that it has begun a project with SA Power Networks to improve the accuracy of forecasting potential equipment failure across the SAPN asset base. The aim of the project is to support SA Power Network’s end state vision of being able to optimise operational expenditure on equipment maintenance as well as capital expenditure on asset replacements to minimise the potential for failure before replacement or upgrades.
“SA Power Networks has an extensive network of electrical assets throughout the state and using data and modern technologies such as machine learning and AI to help us understand the optimal time to replace these assets is key to allowing us to maintain our network in a cost-effective manner,” said Matthew Pritchard, Head of IT Strategy at SA Power Networks.
Complexica will use its proprietary AI/ML engine – Larry, the Digital Analyst® – to forecast the Probability of Failure (PoF) of equipment and optimise replacement decisions by focusing on work orders with a high probability of failure. To do this manually would require the identification of equipment at potential risk of failure through manual analysis of historical replacement data, audit data, and many other datasets, along with external factors such as weather, proximity to water, and bushfire zones, among others. Larry, the Digital Analyst® automates this extensive analysis, and at its core, is made up of a variety of smart algorithms such as Bayesian networks, artificial neural networks, and genetic algorithms, among others. These algorithms perform certain tasks – such as data collection, augmentation, predictive modelling, trade-off analysis, optimisation, and so forth – to provide optimised decision recommendations to end users.
SA Power Networks is the sole electricity distributor in the state of South Australia, delivering electricity from high-voltage transmission network connection points to around 900,000 homes and businesses. The company is engaged in the management of the South Australian electricity distribution network operating over an area of about 180,000 square kilometres and the provision of construction and maintenance services to the electrical infrastructure industry. To learn more about SAPN, visit https://www.sapowernetworks.com.au/
“We are particularly excited to work with SA Power Networks within this scientifically challenging area of predicting asset failures and optimising maintenance and replacement decisions – the problem is not an easy one to solve and a perfect application area for advanced AI/ML methods," said Dr. Zbigniew Michalewicz, Chief Scientist of Complexica. “I look forward to personally working with the SA Power Networks team – along with my fellow AI/ML scientists at Complexica – to help enable their vision of optimised decision-making through advanced capabilities for prediction, optimisation, and simulation."
