The relevance of quality data management for condition based risk management

The electricity industry is experiencing an intensive change due to the new energy market structure and innovation technologies. This, together with latest safety and environmental policies, has a strong impact on how asset intensive businesses within the electricity sector have to deal with asset deterioration and the subsequent modernisation and life extension strategies. This becomes extremely relevant for the UK electricity market, considering the age of the UK's transmission and distribution network. Therefore, it is necessary to review current policies and develop modern asset management strategies derived from real condition based risk analysis and robust data management processes, in order to implement effective interventions in the ageing assets. This paper presents the business case for the development of these modern asset management techniques, and shows the case study of a new Scottish Power's risk management project for the most relevant assets in the network: power transformers.