Managing open points
Technical losses
Similar to a domestic property where the landing lights can be turned on and off from either the hallway downstairs or the landing upstairs, our electricity network has lots of switches within it so it can operate flexibly. This enables us to alter how power flows within the network and to energise our assets from different sources.
Losses are proportional to the resistance of the circuit through which they flow. Increasing the size of a conductor reduces its resistance, as does shortening the length of a circuit. The longer a circuit is the higher the losses will be. If customers who use lots of energy are supplied by a long circuit their losses will be large. We can manage network losses by optimising Normal Open Points to ensure that circuit lengths are kept to a minimum.
The configuration of the network has developed over decades and is a result of different objectives at different times. Through the use of network modelling tools we can investigate the losses caused by the current configuration of our network and test different network configurations to reduce losses before physically moving the Normal Open Points.
