Efficiency through Automation!

Today I’m presenting to a group of  electrical cooperatives (co-ops) executives exchanging ideas and new solutions to their challenges.  The past few days I’ve been listening to discussions with utility co-ops and I can tell you that it is similar to being in a discussion with a stock trader on the exchange.  Sell, buy… energy!  It is a very dynamic business of trading a commodity and its associated challenges.

Information is centered around how to control consumption, manage customer satisfaction, and predict how much energy will be consumed.  Access and sharing this data is important to drive the necessary decisions co-ops need to make.  All of these factors are tracked and apply science to manage and evaluate the data and information in an attempt to predict future energy consumption based on historical trends.

Predictions and usage can be categorized across numerous dimensions of data, peak or non-peak, seasonal, rate categories (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.), weather patterns and others.  All of this usage data, which is collected from the meters (both smart meters using AMI and manually) must be integrated with other sources and developed as an auditable repeatable process that will enable the co-ops to reduce the time spent on creating regulatory and other business decision making reports.

Utility co-ops currently spend a lot of time manually compiling regulatory and member based reports.  Automating this process is key to their success in being able to provide richer information and guide them in pricing decisions and services through automation and more robust forecasting capabilities.

As the speakers discuss “The Smarter Grid” at the cooperative exchange, a lot of time is being spent forecasting energy efficiency.  To close out the track, I hope my presentation will help tie together, through automation, how these great models and data can be used to make the jobs at the utilities better so they can focus on the analysis.  Too much time is still being spent on the data preparation side and not enough on the analysis.  The same processes are having to be done over and over again.

Automation and the “One-Click” Regulatory reporting is key to enabling utilities with the ability to do more analysis with less.  The result being to drive more energy efficiency through automation and technology.  Work smarter, not harder is good for our energy grid and the people that have to make the decisions.

You can read more about our solution and my presentation at zencos.com/odec.