I had the privilege of completing my undergraduate placement with SA Power Networks this year and was fortunate to work in the Strategic Network Investment team within Asset Investment. Our team is responsible for implementing innovative investment strategies across the South Australian distribution network which go beyond traditional network solutions. Some of the key projects my team works on include Automation Investment Programs, Community Batteries Program, and our Network Reliability Strategy. In my role, I focused on a range of reliability initiatives, which included our Feeder Automation program – an automated switching and protection investment program, designed to locate faults, isolate the faulted section, and restore power to healthy sections of the network in approximately one minute. Alongside this, I also was able to design and construct a reliability dashboard, combining various sources of network reliability data, and presenting them in a meaningful and insightful way to show the underlying causes and trends of our power outages. For the Feeder Automation program, my role was to conduct the scoping and planning work for the projects to be undertaken. This involved research and analysis on feeders with high-fault rates and opportunities to tie them to other feeders and strategically select the locations to install automated switches and protective devices to maximise reliability and financial returns when outages occur. This project is very important to the organisation at the moment, as there is an ongoing need to improve our reliability results due to ageing assets and increased demand on the network. As customers turn to more digital and electrified solutions for their homes, there is a need for reliability to improve to that systems can remain online and customers are satisfied. In addition to this, SA Power Networks are penalised for any outage that affects a customer for greater than 3 minutes, hence, customers that have their power restored due to Feeder Automation are not reflected in the financial penalties. Hence, through this program, customers have greater reliability, and there is a financial incentive provided to the organisation. Through the work I was able to complete, there are 100 feeders which will have new automation work on them in 2026, which will assist in backfeeding customers during an outage, and reducing the number of people impacted by a feeder lockout. Hence, this work ensures that customers experience greater reliability and will see less power outages occur in their homes and businesses throughout the year.