Marshfield Electrical Distribution
All of Marshfield’s electricity is supplied by Western Power Distribution WPD). You will pay your bill to a different company, the electricity retailer, but the network that supplies electricity is owned and maintained by WPD. Most of Marshfield is supplied via 4 sub-stations (the far west of the village has different arrangements). A detailed map of how houses in Marshfield are supplied can be found on the Marshfield Village Substation and Feeder Map.
Marshfield CLT EWG are engaged with WPD in a project called OpenLV to find out more read on…
Implementation of the OpenLV Project
Monitoring equipment has been installed in the 4 village substations, Withymead, Hay Street, West Littleton Road, St Martin’s lane. Software was developed to give EWG access to live data in 30 minute records on electricity use for each cable route (feeder) out from the substations (13 in all) Other software allowed EWG to download, at monthly intervals, more detailed 1 minute records from the substations. The monitoring equipment was maintained until the end of 2019.
A dialogue started with WPD regarding the frequency of outages to our electricity supply and Outage Monitors appointed to record and report on the date and times of supply outages. Accounts of the OpenLV Project have been published in AAM
The substation output data has been used to develop and record the profile of overall village demand, to translate this into a visualisation of demand for graphical display, and to identify any time demand comes close to the limiting capacity of a substation.
Another aspect of the data analysis and display has been the aggregation of local generation information, both in terms of sharing with the village generally and in terms of gaining an understanding of the interplay of generation and demand. A survey has been completed to identify the domestic PV installations (30 in total), the number of panels and their orientation.
The implications of EVs on demand profile and on need for behaviour change will require data collection from both village consumers and perhaps wider experience. Village EV users might be persuaded to keep a diary if their system does not include a log of connection times and draw down. Monitoring data at a national level will need to be explored from which generalise data could be abstracted in the absence of, or prior to, wider application of EV charging in the village.
The project ended after successfully collecting 12 months of village electricity use and demand records. The substation equipment is no longer maintained and records of use no longer available. As at August 2020 WPD have provided an alternative means for EWG to inspect the current through each substation feeder, but as yet this is not feeding into a locally accessible recording mechanism.
A first analysis of some of the implications which can be drawn from the records can be viewed in the CSE report dated 13th November 2019 entitled ‘Marshfield Village , OpenLV Data Analysis’.