Remote - Summer 2013 - (Page 8)

Feature Article Navigating the Big Data Jungle How Utilities Can Rise to the Challenge with Analytics Rodger Smith, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Utilities Today, the utilities industry is at a pivotal point in its evolution. As a result of smart grid deployments, electric, gas and water utilities must deal with unprecedented data volumes, presenting new challenges, of course, but also vast opportunities for utilities to transform their businesses. But “big data” (the increasing volume, variety, and velocity of data) can also be a big, amorphous puzzle, as some utilities are discovering today. The challenge lies in improving utilities’ ability to translate the data influx into true actionable intelligence that will help them make decisions to improve business performance, service reliability and customer relationships. So what’s the answer to unlocking big data’s true value? How does access to this information change the way utilities drive their businesses? Can predictive analytics spur operational change? What’s the Big Deal with Big Data? Before diving into the current and future impact of big data, one must take a step back and examine how the data influx has already impacted the utilities industry. For years, utilities have grappled with smart grid issues, including, but not limited to, making the business case for deployment, determining how to roll out smart grid programs, identifying how programs will affect consumers, communicating changes to customers and ensuring secure implementations. Now that many utilities have completed pilot programs or full smart grid rollouts, however, there’s a bigger issue on the table – are utilities actually prepared to manage and make use of the massive data volumes they are collecting? Prior to smart meter implementations, the average utility collected customer meter data once a month. Now, with smart meters, utilities have two-way communication between the utility and a customer’s meter and can collect data much more frequently. A recent Oracle Utilities study found that survey respondents are now collecting data every four hours, on average, representing a 180x increase. In addition to collecting outage, interval, voltage, tamper event, and diagnostic flag data via smart meters, utilities are dealing with other sources of high volume data. These include customer feedback from various communications channels, alternative energy data, and data generated by sophisticated sensors, controls, and grid-healing elements. In theory, collecting this data presents great opportunity for utilities, but once they have captured it, how do they actually use it? Accessing, analyzing, managing and delivering this information to consumers and seniorlevel management (to optimize business operations and enhance customer relationships) is proving to be a daunting task. In addition, continuous pressure to reduce costs in capital budgets, maintenance, operations, and overhead are forcing utilities to look for better operational analytics and related investment planning tools to better control costs and optimize limited budgets. So, what’s next? Where does the industry go from here? Times are Changing Ultimately, to move forward, utilities need a better understanding of how they can actually use the granular insight provided by big data. They must integrate new types of information, such as data generated from mobile 8 www.RemoteMagazine.com devices, social media feeds or sensors, with traditional corporate data, and incorporate the insight they glean into their existing business processes and operations. With this 360° view of their businesses, utilities can realize the insight they need to transform processes. The bigger question utility leaders must ask themselves, and their organizations, however, is whether they are structured to cope with change. Can they examine their business structure and make necessary changes to take advantage of the new data flow? These changes can then ripple out again throughout the organization and back to utilities’ focus on interdepartmental integration, customers (moving from passive interaction to active interaction), and assets (moving from running assets to failure to proactively managing them). For example, with insight gained through making the most of the data influx, utilities can provide customers with more detailed information about their usage patterns so they can better manage their energy consumption and costs, driving further awareness and conservation efforts by the consumer. Additionally, real-time visibility into the conditions and performance of specific assets opens up a whole new world of possibilities for optimizing asset management. Utilities can integrate work and asset management systems with field operational performance data to identify potential issues and better assess risk, ultimately dealing with asset maintenance and replacement proactively rather than after a system failure, that could result in outages and increased costs. Finally, usage and other data can be used to more effectively predict load requirements in advance. This information, in turn, can be used to develop pricing programs for energy to either drive conservation or to change customer usage patterns in order to maximize utilization of existing utility infrastructure, thereby possibly delaying the need for new generation or bulk power purchases. Utilities will benefit greatly from restructuring their organizations, as needed, to enhance data management and by implementing information management and analytics solutions that help them manage data, bridge organizational silos, and put timely information into the hands of decision makers. Opportunities on the Horizon More specifically, through the use of this new data, coupled with sophisticated analytics solutions, utilities can evolve many aspects of their businesses, such as taking appropriate actions to avoid power outages. There is no data analytics silver bullet for all utilities. Big data is not a single answer, nor are business intelligence (BI) dashboards. Utilities will still need operational reporting, and will need to understand their key performance indicators (KPIs), their system average interruption duration index (SAIDI), their customer average interruption frequency index (CAIFI), and the outage restoration process. Effectively running a utility business is a mix of people, process and technology, and effectively leveraging technology (in this case, to interpret data, turn it into actionable intelligence, and then use it to ensure better performance and reliability) is part of the solution. Each utility has specific needs, and data analytics technology can assist in more efficiently addressing those needs, but people and processes http://www.RemoteMagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Remote - Summer 2013

Editor's Choice
Grid Modernization and Cyber Security Trends
Navigating the Big Data Jungle - How Utilities Can Rise To the Challenge with Analytics
Remote Monitoring: Is it a Global Trend?
Critical Infrastructure, Crital Need
Solutions for Transformer Monitoring
Securing Remote Networks Against Cyber Security – NetFlow to the Rescue
ZigBee Resource Guide
SCADA
Networking
Remote Conference Update
Security
Onsite Power
Industry News
Application Feature

Remote - Summer 2013