Nova Scotia Power – September 2019

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A TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY


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NOVA SCOTIA POWER’S TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY


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N O VA S C O T I A P O W E R

NOVA SCOTIA POWER IS MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF TRANSFORMATION WITH A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE. OPERATIONS TECHNOLOGY LEADER MIKE GREENE AND SENIOR TECHNICAL ADVISOR ROB MACNEIL EXPLAIN HOW THE LEADING UTILITY EMBRACES CHANGE

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ova Scotia Power (NSP) is a fully-integrated power utility proudly serving 500,000 residential, commercial and industrial

customers across the province as its primary electricity provider since the early 1900s. A 1,700 strong team help manage $4.1bn worth of generation, transmission and distribution assets producing more than 10,000 gigawatt hours of electricity each year. To keep up with an ever-evolving industry which is increasingly focused on sustainability, the power giant is embracing radical change with a move away from coal and oil-based generation. The shift to renewables prompts the need for significant transformation across the business to meet its 40% renewables target by 2020. Utilising a fuel mix of hydro, tidal, wind, coal, oil, biomass and natural gas to generate electricity, its facilities can produce as much as 2,453 megawatts of electricity delivered across 32,000 km of transmission and distribution lines throughout Nova Scotia.


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N O VA S C O T I A P O W E R

“ CHANGE MANAGEMENT AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT ARE A BIG PART OF THE EQUATION” 06

— Mike Greene, Operations Technology Leader, Nova Scotia Power

Mike Greene, Operations Technology Leader at Nova Scotia Power, is spearheading efforts to develop more flexible systems to manage its assets and both modify and optimise maintenance strategies. Preventative and predictive maintenance, along with surveillance activities and a more holistic and repeatable approach, are being leveraged to determine the company’s ongoing investments in its assets. Since 2010, NSP has been building an asset management function to care for all areas of the


CLICK TO WATCH : ‘POWERING OUR COMMUNITIES. EVERY DAY.’ 07 business under the same philosophy and regime. “Our goal is to understand their criticality to the business and put in place maintenance strategies that deliver intelligence about our equipment’s condition or health, so we’re able to risk-profile all of our major assets,” explains Greene. NSP’s quest is to implement a sophisticated approach towards the application of technologies capable of condition-based maintenance and monitoring with predictive techniques to gather intelligence about its assets. Greene aims to bring them into a single w w w.nspo wer. ca


N O VA S C O T I A P O W E R

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environment to develop rules, rule

intelligence – from preventative and

engines and algorithms, applying

predictive maintenance to predictive

pattern recognition tools to better

analytics and operator surveillance –

understand asset health and guide

into the rules engine to offer an

decision making on maintenance and

improved real time view of our assets.”

investment. Greene’s colleague, Senior

The positive impact on efficiency

Technical Advisor Rob MacNeil, reveals

has been felt across the business.

more sensors are now being deployed

Previously the technical team would

in the field. “We’re able to instantly see

spend time searching for and managing

impending health issues,” he says.

information but less time actually doing

“Pattern recognition that absorbs

high-end analytics. One of the goals for

our sensor information and applies

NSP’s asset management program has

principles to find anomalies and give

been achieved: to provide intelligence

us early alerts, is rolling up all of our

capable of delivering actionable


insights from good data. The challenge lay in making sure the program’s deployment was smooth in providing a platform its users could trust. “We didn’t want to deploy the technology first and then hope to get value from it later,” maintains MacNeil, who notes the importance of defining objectives first and then shaping technology to meet them once trials have proved the solution is scalable. “Mobile technology would be a good example of that. Deploying in one plant, getting it right, and then moving on to other plants and minimizing organisational churn.”

E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE

Mike Greene Mike Greene has over 25 years of experience with Databases, Information Systems and Plant Automation. He is currently the Operational Technology Lead for the Enterprise Asset Management Office of Nova Scotia Power, the utility for the province of Nova Scotia. He is responsible for the integration of NSP’s many OT systems with existing IT systems. He is actively involved with piloting new technology initiatives and expanding the NSP computer network. Greene has a BSc from Dalhousie University and diplomas in Business Computing and Petroleum Resource Technology from the Nova Scotia Institute of Technology.

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N O VA S C O T I A P O W E R

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$225mn Approximate revenue

1972

Year founded

1,700

Approximate number of employees


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“ DIGITAL APPLICATION IN OUR INDUSTRY IS STILL RELATIVELY NEW, SO FINDING MAJOR PARTNERS WHO SHARE OUR PHILOSOPHY IS VERY IMPORTANT TO US” — Rob MacNeil, Senior Technology Advisor, Nova Scotia Power

Greene echoes the need for experimentation with pilot schemes to achieve lasting results from a range of vendors. “In the new world of cloud deployment and software-as-a-service, it’s easy to find software to fill certain niches,” he says. MacNeil notes the importance of evaluating providers, so that NSP does not just purchase an off-the-shelf solution but looks at broad fleet-monitoring tools. “Digital application in our industry is still relatively new, so finding major partners who share our philosophy 13

E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE

Rob MacNeil Rob MacNeil is a Sr. Technical Advisor with Nova Scotia Power (NSPI) and manages the Asset Management Office. He was responsible for the design and implementation of a comprehensive Asset Management approach for NSPI’s f leet of generating units, and is presently leading the design and deployment of the Asset Management Program within NSPI’s Transmission and Distribution business. MacNeil has been in the utility business for 30 years and has experience in Operations, Maintenance, Production, Engineering and Management. Born in Nova Scotia (Canada) he received a BSc from Dalhousie University and an Engineering Degree from the Technical University of Nova Scotia.

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N O VA S C O T I A P O W E R

“ IN THE NEW WORLD OF CLOUD DEPLOYMENT AND SOFTWARE-AS-ASERVICE, IT’S EASY TO FIND SOFTWARE TO FILL CERTAIN NICHES” — Mike Greene, Operations Technology Leader, Nova Scotia Power 14 is very important to us… We’re often pushing the boundaries of their own technical capabilities, so we’re both investing in the future together.” Across the industry, platforms are evolving into the cloud, which need to integrate within existing infrastructures. “With some of the vendors we’re now looking at apps that we can deploy on iOS devices as we look at the tools of the future for our mobile workforce,” reveals Greene. Greene and his team are keen to drive operational intelligence. “Do we need to do something now? Can we wait six months? Can we ignore it and


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C O M PA N Y FACT S

• 10,000+ gigawatt hours of electricity produced each year • $4.1bn worth of generation, transmission and distribution assets • 500,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers


just monitor it until it is taken offline permanently? Because within our industry in Nova Scotia and in some of the North American utilities we have the ultimate aim of reducing our coal fleet,” he explains. In working towards that, MacNeil highlights the need to be systematically flexible as the use of assets change. “Where some units would have been base-loaded in the past, now they’re cycling, so you cannot maintain them in the same way. They have new failure mechanisms that need to be considered, and therefore your maintenance strategy and activities need to change.” By taking a holistic approach to asset management, unlike more traditional environments where each plant makes its own decisions, NSP are able to make portfolio decisions. “We’re confident our investment dollars are going where they need to be,” says MacNeil. “We’re meeting the mission of each unit… It might be a base-load unit, a two-shifting or a flex unit. It might be a unit that needs to retire in a short amount of time. This process of detailed risk understanding enables us to function in those variety of realities for various generating assets, and therefore we’re hitting the w w w.nspo wer. ca

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“ WE’RE CONFIDENT OUR INVESTMENT DOLLARS ARE GOING WHERE THEY NEED TO BE” — Rob MacNeil, Senior Technology Advisor, Nova Scotia Power

right risks.” That positive impact can defer outages to the end of the life of a unit, saving millions of dollars. Continuing its asset management mission has been vital for NSP and is transforming the way it uses all of its generating units as deep operational experience is applied to change. How has the process helped with Nova Scotia Power’s renewables goal? “It’s part of our corporate philosophy to develop a greener portfolio of generation,” says MacNeil, who finds the tools, systems and processes


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designed for NSP’s traditional generation

Change management and continuous

also fit well in the renewable world with,

improvement are a big part of the

for example, wind farms. “Our distribut-

equation. For us, they’re not just

ed-generation assets lend themselves

add-ons. It comes back to the

to the digital technologies and commu-

dedicated nature of our team. We’re

nication tools we’re deploying. We’ve

not doing this part-time; we’re fully

learned that the infrastructure we’ve

invested in sustaining these processes

established is well suited for renewable

and reaping the rewards.”

assets and that’s a win for us.” For Greene, the right combination of people, processes and technology is paramount to future success: “There’s no one aspect that can be ignored so we put equal emphasis on all factors… w w w.nspo wer. ca


Nova Scotia Power 1223 Lower Water St. Halifax, NS B3J 3S8 T 1-800-428-6230 www.nspower.ca


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