Case Study: Tesla Consultants achieves optimized GXP reinforcement timing and cost‑risk clarity with Palisade @RISK

Tesla Consultants - Customer Case Study

Tesla Consultants, working with DELTA Utilities on behalf of Dunedin Electricity, faced a planning challenge: whether and when to reinforce the Frankton GXP (substation) to avoid costly customer outages as demand grew. To quantify the tradeoff between increased Transpower line charges and the cost of unserved energy, Tesla Consultants used Palisade’s @RISK to apply probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation to historical outage, weather and demand data.

Using Palisade’s @RISK in Excel, Tesla Consultants ran 50,000 Monte Carlo iterations across multiple growth scenarios (5–20%), sampling outage frequencies (Poisson), repair times and seasonal failure modes to produce distributions of annual unserved energy and the Present Value of future non‑supply costs. The analysis produced PDFs/CDFs that allowed direct comparison to the PV of increased line charges (~$674,000) and supported a recommendation to defer transformer up‑rating at +5–10% growth; it also quantified load‑shedding frequency (likely ~every 2 years by +7.5% growth) and identified snow and transformer failures as key sensitivities, giving decision‑makers measurable confidence in the outcome.

Tesla Consultants

Chris O’Halloran

Consulting Engineer