Manitoba Hydro Wins the 2019 Copperleaf Community “Innovator of the Year” Award!

The Copperleaf Community “Innovator of the Year” Award celebrates the most unique and outstanding things our customers are doing with the Copperleaf C55™ Decision Analytics solution. At our recent 2019 Copperleaf AIPM Summit, we showcased three of our customer’s innovative projects, and attendees voted live to decide who would win this year’s award!

This year’s nominees were:

• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) – Power Operations
  • Project: River Management Value Model
• Manitoba Hydro
  • Project: Predictive Analytics for Fleet & Facilities
• TVA – Nuclear
  • Project: Nuclear Regulatory Margin Value Model

While the competition was tough, Manitoba Hydro received 48% of the votes to take home the Innovation award!

A Brief History:

Manitoba Hydro is a Crown Corporation and one of the largest energy utilities in Canada, serving over 580,000 electric customers and over 280,000 natural gas customers. Manitoba Hydro is one of the lowest cost providers of electricity in Canada whose mission is to meet customers’ expectations for the delivery of safe, reliable energy services at a fair price.

In 2011, Manitoba Hydro implemented C55 in the Generation Operations operating group to improve the efficiency, consistency and transparency of its investment planning process. C55 was used to support the company’s rate application to the Public Utilities Board in 2015. The ease and speed with which the Generation team was able to extract the necessary data to respond to questions asked during the rate hearings, led the company to embark on an initiative to expand C55 and the Copperleaf Value Framework across the entire organization.

From 2017 to 2018, C55 was implemented enterprise-wide across the following areas: Generation, Transmission, Electrical and Gas Distribution, Information Technology Services, Fleet, Facilities, and Human Resources.

Innovation Project: Predictive Analytics for Fleet and Facilities

In 2018, the Manitoba Hydro Fleet Services team faced a key challenge. The annual capital expenditure required to keep its fleet in good condition was estimated at more than double the budget. While the company’s existing Fleet Asset Management System (FleetFocus M5) contained a listing of the vehicles and their attributes, it was difficult to use this information to make decisions on how best to allocate the spending for maximum value. The Fleet Services team needed a consistent and objective way to determine which fleet vehicles should be replaced with the limited funding.

Copperleaf, through consultation with Manitoba Hydro, developed an innovative fleet analytics model to estimate the intrinsic value of each vehicle type, based on the economic impact of power interruptions on the customer. A number of factors were then used as inputs to the model, including:

• Criticality of the individual vehicle to Manitoba Hydro
• Usage of the vehicle to date
• Cost of operating the vehicle to date
• Historical costs of operating the vehicle type
• Historical depreciation of the vehicle type
• Replacement cost of the vehicle

Using C55 Predictive Analytics, Manitoba Hydro was then able to predict the optimal replacement dates for over thirty different vehicle types. C55 integrates with the utility’s Fleet Asset Management System, which means that all updates to fleet asset data flow automatically into C55, ensuring that the optimal result is produced every time analytics and reports are run.

The end result is an optimized fleet replacement plan that outlines which vehicles should be replaced and when, based on the available funding.

The fleet analytics value model that was created during this project was incorporated into Manitoba Hydro’s corporate value framework. This ensures that the investment decisions made by the Fleet Services team are also aligned to the strategic objectives of the entire company.

This innovation has provided Manitoba Hydro with a more quantitative and evidence-based decision-making platform for their fleet, providing much greater confidence that money is being spent in the right places.  Manitoba Hydro has realized benefits in several areas, including:

1. Replacement timing: Fleet value model provides the ability to assess the criticality of vehicles and factor in a number of inputs to determine the optimal replacement timing
2. Better planning: Improved ability to develop short-term and long-term fleet plans in a budget-constrained environment
3. Updated asset data: Integration ensures decisions are based on the most current fleet asset data
4. Smoothed investment: Ensures vehicles of a similar type are not all replaced in the same year

Congratulations to Manitoba Hydro on winning the 2019 Copperleaf Community ‘Innovator of the Year’ Award! We look forward to next year’s Copperleaf AIPM Summit and celebrating the new and creative things our customers are doing with C55.

To learn more about this innovative project, please download our case study.