IE 11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

California Utility Breaks Big Data Bottlenecks

Utilities are generating massive amounts of data, bringing to the forefront challenges of how to store it, analyze it and integrate it to provide actionable business insights.

electric grid
Utilities are generating massive amounts of data, bringing to the forefront challenges of how to store it, analyze it and integrate it to provide actionable business insights. Utility organizations will have to face and conquer these problems quickly in order to effectively manage technology changes, rising customer expectations, competitive threats and regulatory pressures.

Over the past several years, many utilities have invested in their infrastructures by injecting smart sensors across their enterprises, so that existing distribution systems are able to provide near real-time data about what’s going on across the network. These sensors are just one way utilities are generating massive amounts of data, bringing to the forefront challenges of how to store it, analyze it, and integrate it to provide actionable business insights. Utility organizations will have to face and conquer these problems quickly in order to effectively manage technology changes, rising customer expectations, competitive threats and regulatory pressures.

When polled during a March 25, 2014 webinar sponsored by Teradata [3], only 6.8% of participants indicated that when making decisions for their company from a data perspective, they had all or most of the data needed to make successful decisions. The largest segment, 57.8%, responded that they felt good about the data they had access to about half of the time, and 34.7% felt that they seldom had all the data needed to make good business decisions. Clearly, not having access to data cross-functionally is a major concern.

Michael Glass, Director of Demand Side Systems at PG&E, leads a group of IT professionals who plan, manage, deliver and support the systems behind many of PG&E’s customer programs. Glass’s group owns and maintains PG&E’s Customer Data Warehouse, which holds the data from the utility’s 9 million plus SmartMeter deployment and supports associated customer and interval data analytics programs. Glass shared how his company partnered with Teradata to tap into the value of the data they are collecting across the enterprise.

When developing its approach to data, PG&E considered its options. At one end of the spectrum, the company would build its data and analytics systems internally. At the other end, the company would hand its data off to a third party to provide analytics. PG&E settled on a hybrid solution, which was to combine a traditional data warehouse with some big data components --Teradata provides the foundation for the utility’s Interval Data Analytics environment.

Glass explained that it makes sense to keep the data within the enterprise so that the utility is not beholden to a third party, and keep the environment pristine for reliable customer and operational analytics. This option was easier for the utility to implement, less expensive, and less daunting. 

Putting all of PG&E’s data in one place allows for quick self-service user access and enables effective cross-functional analytics. PG&E’s Interval Data Analytics environment breaks the current “big data bottleneck” surrounding interval meter data and reduces dependency on IT.  It provides analytic tools to leverage existing interval data, cross-functional analytics to inform asset investment decisions, more accurate load forecasting for ISO bidding, a streamlined and consistent customer experience, and reduced risks through timeliness, consistency and granularity of data for rate designs and compliance reporting. PG&E now has the ability, through cross-functional analytics, to solve interrelated issues, for example applying data from a customer participation program to drive value into other parts of the enterprise by deferring construction work and adding reliability.

The power of cross-functional analytics will transform the utility industry and help solve business problems enterprise-wide, from enabling more accurate energy supply analysis, to more effective transformer load analysis to better targeted marketing campaigns and improved customer service.

This story originally appeared on Intelligent Utility and has been republished with permission.