NZ Lens cable health monitoring 2026

Project overview

The purpose of this project is to collaborate with EA Technology and other EDBs to evaluate a new asset monitoring technology (VisNet Hub monitors) and predictive models, on a variety of cable assets and geographic conditions throughout NZ. This project will allow EDBs to evaluate both the technical solution, and its ability to deliver financial and quality benefits to consumers, and to share collective insights and learnings in the following areas: Detect and trend pre-fault activity to prevent cable failures before they occur Identify correlations between degradation, environmental conditions, and manufacturer Improve asset-health forecasting and renewal-planning accuracy Benchmark LV network performance and reliability against national peers Gain broader visibility into harmonics, capacity, and DER-driven load impacts.

Innovation challenge or opportunity

Due to the historical uptake of Undergrounding New Zealand's network and as outlined in the CIGRE paper 1348 2023, Cuppen Kueh and Gibson, we understand there will be a new requirement to renew LV cables at rate we have never done before, this technology aims to demonstrate the value of using high speed logging to capture 'Prefault' waveforms of LV cables and using Large Language Models (LLM), classify the cable into failure categories allowing a targeted approach that address the conditional need more so than just traditional aged based assumptions. The goal of which aims to reduced unnecessary spend and interruptions whilst increasing long term reliability and customer satisfaction.

Desired outcomes and customer benefits

Business outcomes include: Detects and trends pre-fault activity, enabling proactive maintenance and preventing cable failures before they occur, reducing outages and customer disruptions. Real-time monitoring and rapid fault location minimise outage duration, with UK deployments showing up to 120-minute reductions in outage times per LV fault. Potentially reduce outages as a result of cable failure or increasing thermal and loading stress linked to increased use of DER. Reduction of unplanned service interruptions (faster restoration) Minimises unnecessary excavations and enables targeted repairs optimised LV reinforcement investments and operational resource allocation Reduction of OPEX and optimizing CAPEX through planned interventions.

Customer benefits include: Improved reliability & reduced downtime. Better affordability due to reduced operational costs.

Upcoming milestones

September 2025 - first round table

January 2026- halfway point, major learnings presented by EA technology.

April/May 2026 - value proposition decision point, extension of trail decision time

Progress made

As of today (14/08/26) 21 of the 40 locations have been installed and are loaded and reporting data. These 21 sites cover 91 LV feeders and approximately 1800 ICP's. We have 3 LV feeders showing 'Pre fault' indicators. With 1 listed as failure imminent which may require attention in the next 6 months

Low voltage network models are being sent to EA to allow them to demonstrate their Impedance Distance to fault function to give a location with a margin of error of the possible fault location.