Microsoft integrator Avanade has won the deal to design the outage management system for TransGrid, which transmits electricity through 12,016 kilometres of high voltage transmission lines supported by about 20,000 structures that are made from concrete, wood or steel.

The continued operation of this infrastructure, and the 76 substations and power station switchyards that support it, are essential for electricity supply as power retailers rely on TransGrid for their electricity supplies.

Historically, the company has operated an outage management system dedicated to planning maintenance of its far-flung infrastructure, so that any downstream disruptions caused by planned repairs can be avoided.

Yet the challenge of creating an application capable of including all of the interdependencies on TransGrid's vast network has proven beyond the reach of a single application and the company's staff have used a variety of programs, often manually re-keying between systems.

The application operates in a legacy environment that is expensive to operate.