Economic and Reliability Assessment Tool for Smart Monitoring Solutions in MV Cable Networks

A practical framework is presented to connect technical reliability effects in medium-voltage (MV) cable networks with financial outcomes that matter for Distribution System Operators (DSOs) and solution providers. The work was carried out within Nexans’ grid-reliability activity and focuses on online MV cable monitoring based on Smart Cable Guard (SCG). The central idea is simple: feeder operational investments (those that affect positively faults, weak-spot restorations, downtime, and interruptions) are translated into annual cash flows and standard investment metrics. To make this translation transparent, the restoration process is decomposed into the stages that typically drive time and cost (localization; administrative and street-works; excavation and reinstatement; electrical repair and testing). By exposing these drivers, the link from “minutes and events” to “euros” becomes adjustable and auditable. The objective was to formalize this technical-to-economic chain, quantify the cost of unreliability and the savings enabled by monitoring, express results in standard financial terms (NPV, IRR, discounted payback, ROI), and deliver an interactive tool that computes outcomes per feeder and in aggregate. The tool receives feeder-level inputs and country-dependent parameters, applies scenarios (from baseline with no monitoring to full SCG deployment), and reports both operational and monetary effects. Because European regulatory contexts often tie continuity indicators and unserved energy to incentives or standard compensations. A real DSO case from Southern Europe is used to demonstrate the workflow. Results show the expected pattern under full monitoring: emergency faults and associated interruptions are reduced; weak-spot restorations increase as issues are surfaced earlier; and the time spent in localization and civil stages is also reduced. These technical shifts translate into lower restoration expenditure (OPEX) and reduced exposure to context-specific payments or penalties where such mechanisms exist. The main value for decision-makers lies in feeder-level granularity: high-impact feeders can be identified quickly, and deployment can be prioritized where the benefits are highest. The study has limits. Reported magnitudes are case-specific and depend on local costs, practices, and regulatory parameters. Reliability compensation/penalty rates were kept neutral where policy rules or compensation rates were unavailable. The model does not claim overall SAIDI/SAIFI values; it focuses on the portion of reliability effects relevant to the cable system under the adopted assumptions. Future work should include country libraries (costs, time-shares, remuneration structures), country-specific calculation of compensation/penalty, benefit-decay modeling as networks stabilize, and support for partial feeder monitoring and branched topologies. In summary, a clear pathway from feeder events to financial results is provided, implemented in an interactive tool, called the Value Creation Tool (VCT), and demonstrated on real utility data. The approach is intended to help DSOs and partners judge, with simple inputs and local assumptions, whether SCG-enabled monitoring represents and interesting investment.