Is a SAPS cheaper than replacing powerlines?

Frequently, yes, and the crossover point is closer than most asset planners assume. Rural network extension and replacement in Australia is commonly costed in the range of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per kilometre depending on terrain, access, vegetation and line construction standard. A SAPS is a fixed cost per site. Where a single customer sits at the end of several kilometres of line, the SAPS is usually the cheaper option on capital cost alone, before any operating saving.

The operating case is often larger than the capital case, and it is the part that gets under-counted:

• Vegetation management on the removed line, in perpetuity
• Inspection and maintenance of poles, conductor and pole-top assets
• Fault response to a line that is long, remote and slow to patrol
• Bushfire and storm exposure, both the risk cost and the mitigation cost
• Reliability penalties, every hour of outage on that feeder is counted

Standalone power systems are reducing outage hours by around 90% on remote properties. Pilot programs have cut outage durations from 1,000 hours over five years on individual sites down to 72 hours. Long-term network scenarios contemplate deployments of thousands of units, removing tens of thousands of poles and tens of thousands of kilometres of conductor.

Multiple DNSPs are targeting 400+ SAPS installations across their networks by 2029. The economics are straightforward: a SAPS costs less than extending, maintaining and operating remote lines indefinitely.

The number that decides it on any given feeder is line length per customer. If you can send us that, plus the customer’s load profile, we can size the system.