As the energy transition accelerates, how can electric utilities transform their asset investment planning processes to overcome challenges and take advantage of emerging opportunities?
Our goal is to create a portfolio of projects for the next 10 years to address the necessary grid extension required by the German Energy Transition, as well as the replacement of our existing assets.
We now have over 300 colleagues managing all their project information in one place. This is genuinely going to save us time, improve our decision making, and give us a clear picture of each project’s value.
Having all of our projects aligned through a common value framework… gives us the ability to say, ‘If outcome A happens, what is the optimal investment strategy? What do we do, what do we not do, and why?
As a regulated business, we use Copperleaf’s tools to optimize and ensure that every dollar we spend provides the greatest value.
Emergent events lead to uncertainty, which lead to people seeking to understand the impact on the networks, customers, and business. With Copperleaf’s products…we’ve been able to quickly answer these questions and make decisions to move our business forward.
By leveraging AIPM best practices, the Copperleaf solution enables our Grid Division to create long-term investment strategies that maximize value and proactively manage risk in a systematic way.
The Copperleaf solution has enabled us to determine the optimal investment approach in the face of competing objectives, and make better investment decisions that support achieving our goals.
Decision Analytics for Electric Utilities
Climate change, aging infrastructure, new technologies, digital transformation initiatives, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments demand increased investment. Electric utilities are executing multi-pronged strategies to safeguard and evolve the resilience of their systems—pursuing decarbonization and a zero-carbon grid, ramping up renewable sources, protecting assets from climate-related events, and defending against cybersecurity threats—while continuing to deliver safe, reliable, and affordable energy to customers. To thrive in this environment, utilities must strike the right balance between cost-effectively managing business-as-usual activities and investing for the future.
How can you be confident you’re making the best decisions that deliver the greatest value and drive your strategic goals?
Copperleaf® has been working at the forefront of asset management best practices for more than 20 years, delivering best-in-class decision analytics solutions to many of the world’s leading utilities. By developing frameworks to evaluate all investment options on equal footing, we make it easy for clients to compare dissimilar projects—from those designed to strengthen system reliability, to those that increase wind or solar capacity or improve employee efficiency—and create plans that are transparent, defensible, and aligned with strategic objectives. The Copperleaf Decision Analytics Solution can help your organization identify the optimal investment strategy and dynamically adapt plans in the face of unprecedented change and uncertainty.
Proactively Manage Risk Exposure
Explore how different levels of investment impact risk to build a robust, defensible plan.
Improve Planning Efficiency
Assess all investments consistently in a centralized system to break down silos and expedite approvals.
Allocate Funding and Resources with Confidence
Develop executable plans that maximize capital efficiency—while meeting targets and constraints.
Execute Corporate Strategy
Align investments with your strategic goals, including financial, net-zero, ESG, reliability, and other targets.
Proven Solution Delivers High ROI
Every Copperleaf client has achieved 100% return on their investment within their first planning cycle—and every organization that has implemented our solution continues to use it successfully today. Measurable results include:
increase in capital efficiency
reduction in risk exposure
reduction in planning time
Planning the energy transition
The energy transition represents a significant change to the way energy is generated, managed, distributed, and used—today and in the future. This white paper highlights 4 best practices for optimized asset investment planning:
- Develop a value framework fit for the energy transition
- Improve governance of project portfolios
- Adapt asset strategies to new technologies and trends
- Develop a robust plan for future scenarios
Create optimal investment plans to drive your strategic goals
In an industry where projections for demand growth, electric vehicle adoption, and distributed energy resources (DER) involve uncertainty and variability, having the ability to evaluate potential future scenarios and create an optimized plan is critical.
Copperleaf’s AI-powered optimization can evaluate the vast number of potential investment options and identify the optimal plan within minutes. Sensitivity analysis can easily be performed to explore the impact of multiple constraints and targets (e.g. resources, budgets, risks, outages, dependencies, ESG), and build a realistic, deliverable plan to achieve your strategic goals.
Capital planning for climate resilience
The impacts of climate change are growing and utilities are under pressure to demonstrate that they are making the right investments at the right time. This playbook explores three ways asset investment planning software can support highly effective capital planning to achieve utility climate resilience.
Plan with agility in a dynamic environment
As your business environment changes, new tactical and strategic priorities emerge. Copperleaf makes it easy to quickly run what-if analyses to explore various investment strategies, build consensus, and align investment decisions with new strategic priorities.
Copperleaf enables a continuous planning process by highlighting variances between planned and actual performance. No matter what twists and turns arise during execution, you’ll be able to re-optimize plans, communicate and defend any changes to stakeholders, and adapt quickly to maintain optimal business performance.
Decision analytics for net zero & ESG
As ESG and net zero continue to rise in importance, utilities are leveraging decision analytics to achieve these goals efficiently and cost effectively. This Utility Week report explains how the Copperleaf Value Framework can be developed and deployed to underpin better decisions on where to invest. Download this report to explore how decision analytics can help you achieve your ESG and net-zero goals.
Copperleaf CNAIM Solution
The Copperleaf CNAIM Solution combines the power of cutting-edge technology with a proven framework for best practice monetized risk, empowering electric transmission and distribution utilities to leverage the Common Network Asset Indices Methodology (CNAIM) quickly and effectively in a streamlined and extensible asset management solution. Copperleaf CNAIM can be implemented in as little as 4 months to help your organization measure and manage risk, compare investment scenarios, and create optimal strategies across your entire asset base.
Decision making for wildfire risk reduction
Climate change has elevated wildfire risk from a managed threat to one that is widespread and escalating. Responding to this increased threat requires both near- and long-term mitigation measures and enterprise-wide strategy development.
The Copperleaf Decision Analytics Solution can help your organization model wildfire and other climate-related risks and develop investment strategies to proactively mitigate those risks while balancing the day-to-day operational needs of your business.
Adopted by Industry Leaders
Optimized asset interventions at National Grid
National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) and Copperleaf have solved a complex problem that has plagued the electrical transmission industry for many years. NGET undertakes 5,000 interventions across over 60,000 assets each year, which poses a massive data challenge. The company needed a solution to bundle work on each circuit more effectively—to minimize the number of required outages on the network. This ground-breaking circuit optimization project won the Innovation Award at the 2020 IAM Global Awards.
Multi-sector asset investment planning at RNG
Rheinische NETZGesellschaft mbH (RNG) manages over 30,000 km of distribution networks for electricity, gas, water, and district heating in Germany. The Copperleaf Decision Analytics Solution is helping RNG manage risks and project portfolios across multiple networks and asset owners, and align its Asset Investment Planning and Management (AIPM) processes with the ISO 55000 asset management standard.
Sustainable asset investment planning at Endeavour Energy
Endeavour Energy is a power transmission and distribution provider, supplying electricity to over 2.5 million people in Australia. This case study describes how the Copperleaf solution is helping the company:
- Gain additional investment budget headroom
- Quantify and reduce the risk from safety, environmental, and community impacts
- Incorporate ESG and sustainability factors in decision making
- Save thousands of hours analyzing risk profiles at the portfolio level
Our Product Suite
Copperleaf provides a highly-configurable enterprise software solution that can grow with you as your business needs evolve. It integrates seamlessly with existing EAM, APM, ERP, GIS, and other systems for more efficient, data-driven decision making.
Explore our resources
Blog
Webinar Recap: Delivering the Energy Transition—Valuing T&D Investments to Support Grid Modernization
Blog
Webinar Recap: Leveraging AI-Powered Optimization to Bundle Asset Interventions and Reduce Outages
Blog
Monetised Risk in the Energy Sector
Discover our client success stories
Case Study
Enterprise-Wide Decision Making At Manitoba Hydro
Blog
National Grid: Turning Aspirational Goals into Operational Plans with Copperleaf
Case Study