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Life cycle management of the electricity grid

Company: Liander (Arnhem)
Researcher: Richard Ruitenburg, MSc
Level: post-master
Mentor: Dr. Jan Braaksma
Company description: Liander is – as a part of the Alliander group – responsible for the management of the gas and electricity networks in a number of regions in the Netherlands.

Introduction to the problem

Currently Liander is facing a number of challenges, among others:

  1. the energy transition, which makes new demands on their networks due to the increase in the number of electrical cars and local sustainable energy production, only to mention a few; and
  2. .the replacement of a part of their assets, which are approaching the end of their projected life time.

Hence it is important to gain deeper insight in the life cycle of the assets Liander owns. The development of life cycle management plans will offer Liander the possibility to make the right decisions with respect to the maintenance and the replacement of their assets. This will allow them to secure and even improve the quality of the electricity network with respect to future developments.

This project will be carried out in close cooperation with NedTrain. NedTrain is responsible for the maintenance of the fleet of the Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen). Over the last years, NedTrain has developed life cycle management plans as a means to monitor the performance of their fleet and to be able to secure this performance for the years to come. The knowledge and experience of NedTrain will be used as an input in this project and will be translated to the specific circumstances Liander is facing. Next to the input from NedTrain, this project will make extensive use of the available literature about asset life cycle maintenance and the in-depth knowledge of Alliander with respect to the electricity network.

Research objectives: The goal of this project is twofold: 1. the development of a life cycle management plans for two installations Liander makes use of; and 2. the development of a more general framework that Liander can use to create life cycle management plans for the other assets they own.