Case Study - HEEC Pilots 3D Digital Design Standards to Deliver Miluo Western 220-kilovolt Substation

A Lifecycle 3D Digitalization Initiative

The State Grid Corporation of China is developing and promoting 3D design standards to digitalize processes for lifecycle substation management throughout the country. The Miluo western 220-kilovolt substation is the organization’s CNY 120 million pilot initiative, and the first substation to use 3D digital modeling throughout construction, operations, and maintenance. Located in the Hubei province of China, the substation will significantly improve the grid structure in the Miluo area, covering 16-square kilometers and enhancing the reliability of power supplied to 160,000 residents. POWERCHINA Hubei Electric Engineering Co., Ltd. (HEEC) won the bid as lead designer to implement 3D collaborative modeling in accordance with the State Grid’s design standards and to deliver digital twins to the owner.

 

The project presented numerous site challenges, including a complexsurrounding landscape lined with large residential houses that restricted the layout of the substation facility. To accommodate the compressed footprint, the spatial location of each asset type – including underground works, building structures, electrical equipment, and cable trenches– required multiple contributing engineering disciplines in close collaboration. Working against an aggressive 10-month schedule to complete construction, HEEC had to effectively coordinate with each construction organization to safely deliver the project on time. Faced with these design and construction difficulties, the team required integrated BIM, reality modeling, and simulation and visualization technology to apply 3D digital standards and achieve full lifecycle digitalization.

 

Reality Modeling Uses Digital Context for Immersive Visualization

To accurately plan the project, HEEC used oblique photogrammetry, captured using an unmanned aerial vehicle, and ContextCapture to survey the substation site and generate a 3D reality mesh. Using geospatial reality modeling helped establish a digital context for the project, visually capturing landscape, vegetation, rivers, lakes, roads, and houses surrounding the project area to support substation site and corridor planning. “ContextCapture generates highprecision reality models automatically and can visually reflect various information to help make decisions,” said Wei Wang, executive assistant, senior engineering at HEEC. Compared to traditional 2D drawings, using Bentley’s reality modeling application provided reliable environmental information to rationalize the substation layout amid the constrained site.

 

HEEC relied on the accuracy of the 3D reality model to visualize and analyze the existing conditions, optimizing the incoming and outgoing corridor lines while also minimizing impact on agricultural land and houses bordering the substation. Using the reality mesh enabled the team to avoid demolishing six houses and reduce the area occupied by the substation by 22%, saving 0.94 hectares when compared to the original design scheme. As a result, HEEC saved CNY 2.5 million through the optimal substation layout and reduced earthworks for bored and cast-in-place piles by 63 cubic meters to save an additional CNY 90,000.

 

Aerial image capturing helped to establish a digital context for the project, visually capturing the surrounding area. Image courtesy of POWERCHINA HEEC, Ltd

 

Optimizes Collaborative Design

The compressed substation layout, while optimal from an environmental and residential perspective, required multiple engineering disciplines to collaborate to avoid collisions in the tight space. To ensure reliable, quality, detailed 3D design, HEEC established an open, connected data environment, and reengineered the design process using Bentley’s integrated digital applications. ProjectWise provided the coordinated platform to integrate electrical, structural, and underground modeling works. Using OpenUtilities Substation, OpenBuildings Designer, STAAD, Bentley Raceway and Cable Management, and Promis.e streamlined workflows to optimize collaborative design and avoid 30 collisions, saving CNY 800,000.

 

The electrical and civil engineering groups shared data and information through 3D models in Bentley’s disciplinespecific digital applications that were then imported into the comprehensive substation model available within the connected data environment. Integrating STAAD for structural design and analysis helped refine the architectural model to achieve less than 1% deviation in accuracy between the designed and actual steel material, optimizing the steel frame with just 8 tons of steel to save CNY 120,000 in material costs.