Smart Spares Consulting' - Maximizing GIS asset resiliency and availability through a cost-, risk-, and utilization-optimized strategic spares approach leveraging existing inventory

High operational availability combined with high asset resilience against major failures are key to a reliable energy supply and are therefore major goals of the asset management of these companies.

This paper describes the ‘Smart Spares Consulting’ approach which supports system operators to reach highest operational availability and resilience of their switchgear assets - especially in the event of major, or even catastrophic failures. The focus is put on the strategic selection of complete functional GIS spare modules and major components, as they can resolve major failures most effectively and help to restore operational readiness in the fastest and most reliable way.

The selection process of strategic spare modules is based on expert contributions from the switchgear OEM and the system operator. It is elaborated how the co-creation between OEM experts and operator experts can lead to a smart, efficient, and sustainable spares solution. It is demonstrated how the full transparency over all installed asset modules and their variants sets the basis for fact-based decisions and how it prepares the way forward for the identification of commonalities and subsequently for the exploitation of synergies within the installed base.

The combination of making use of inherent technical commonalities, the prioritized scope for failure risk coverage and the focus on the most critically rated functional GIS modules, leads to the cost-, risk- & utilization-optimized recommendation of strategic spares.

It makes perfect sense to integrate strategic spare modules into the analysis which are already held in the system operator’s inventory. It is shown how a one-to-one comparison of existing spare modules with the module variants in the installed base, creates added value to make best use of previous investments and to reduce the cost for future spares procurements.

The analysis results and recommendations are transparent and comprehensible for all parties involved. System operators can use them to facilitate their internal decision-making processes for budgeting and procuring their essential spare modules.

Examples from case studies are shared to show how ‘Smart Spares Consulting’ can prepare transparent and informed decisions to maximize GIS asset resilience and availability.