Beyond the Data

How can a utility get a high-level view of their overall safety? The Omaha Public Power District build a Safety Index that is displayed as a dashboard and available to anyone in the organization. The Safety Index measures various indicators, each of which are scored and weighted in an overall safety score. Every month, the entire company receives an email with the safety score, which helps disseminate safety information and increase transparency. Paul Tranisi, Corporate Safety System and Data Analyst at OPPD worked with a team to build the Safety Index. He walks us through the trial and error involved in scoring safety indicators, and how they calculate an overall safety score.

El Paso Electric's Enterprise Advanced Analytics team evolved out of a group working in power generation. It all started when they recognized an onerous process for collecting data for regulatory and compliance filings. They were dedicating a vast amount of time sifting through large datasets to find what they needed, so they decided to build an application to streamline data collection and availability. The result was the Generation Event Application Recorder (GEAR). With the success of the GEAR project, these data enthusiasts secured executive buy-in to launch the Enterprise Advanced Analytics team. Nadia Powell, Director of Enterprise Advanced Analytics, and Aaron Arzaga, Sr.Data Science and Business Intelligence Analyst, championed the GEAR project. On this episode, Nadia and Aaron share how they pulled the dashboard together and proved to their executives that analytics was worth an investment.

Tesla isn't the only one making electric vehicles (EVs) popular; every major automaker has announced plans for EVs in the next five years. How can utilities use data and analytics to prepare for the onslaught of EV's and create an exceptional owner experience?

The changing dynamic of energy markets means utilities want to position themselves as the go-to experts for consumers. What are utilities doing to educate customers and create their profile as “trusted energy advisor”?

The term digital twin has been around for years, but there are many different definitions of digital twin and it can be a very abstract concept. In this episode we take the digital twin out of the abstract and talk about real-world working examples of the digital twin. Matt Piper, Global Director of Industry Solutions at ESRI is focused on building digital twins of the social, natural, and built environments using GIS data. He talks about the importance of data quality, data governance, and how to integrate various datasets to support the digital twin.

This part two of a two-part series. Listen to part one here: https://beyond-the-data.simplecast.com/episodes/national-labs-talk-climate-risk-part-1

For more from Andy Bochman, join us at Utility Analytics Summit 2022 in New Orleans, May 10-12. Andy will be delivering the closing keynote session on May 12. His session, “Predicting the Future to Protect What Matters Most" will marry state-of-the-art climate forecast data with an emerging methodology for prioritizing protective and adaptive actions based on consequence.As an added bonus, save 20% on registration with code UAIPOD. If you register before April 1, that's a total savings of over $350. This discount is exclusive to “Beyond the Data” listeners. Register with the discount today: https://www.utilityanalyticssummit.com/2022/register?code=UAIPOD

 If you haven't listened to part one, you can find it here: https://beyond-the-data.simplecast.com/episodes/award-winner-series-part-1.

In December 2021, UAI announced the winners of the second annual UAI Excellence Awards sponsored by Bidgely. These awards honor the best of the best in the utility analytics profession, recognizing the individuals, teams, and organizations that have achieved and maintained excellence through community engagement and innovation. This two-part series features interviews with some of the award winners. On this episode, Ben Ettlinger, Manager of Digital Analytics for the New York Power Authority, and Kim Gaddy, Independent Consultant, Former VP & Managing Director of UAI, share their stories and how they ended up being leaders in utility analytics.

This episode is part of UA Week 2021 virtual event.

This episode is part of UA Week 2021 virtual event. For more content, register here:  https://www.utilityanalyticsweek.com/uaweek/pricing

Emerald had been undergoing rapid retail load growth since 2015 and the utility's Board instructed Staff to look at new ways of marketing energy efficiency. In addition, a resource capacity shortage began to surface in the Northwest around this time and conventional products for dealing with short-term power supply needs became scarce. As a result, the utility desired to study peak demand reduction through real-world demand savings programs and time of use rate design. Rob Currier, Power Resources Supervisor at Emerald People's Utility District (EPUD), and Beth Massey, Director of Connected Analytics at The Energy Authority (TEA) talk about the advanced analytics they performed across Emerald's customer base and how they created a flexible platform for future analytics.

When will data be truly transformational for utilities? Marie Clark, Analytics CoE Lead at Eversource Energy, says it's when utilities can figure out how to monetize data. That doesn't mean selling data, it means understanding the total cost of ownership of data and how Artificial Intelligence can create business efficiencies that enable humans to be better at their jobs.

Data warehouses and data lakes are key components of enterprise architecture, but they lack data context. A data fabric is a layer that sits on top of data repositories and creates contextualized knowledge by linking data sets together using machine learning. Gabe Prado, Sr. Director of Product Marketing for Power & Utilities at Cognite, explains data fabric and why it is important.

We're throwing it back this week to June 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has been around for just a few months and utilities were starting to realize the changes it was forcing on their organizations. Most notably, the rate of digital transformation was increasing and advanced analytics were playing a central role in running a more decentralized work environment. As we head into the end of 2021, utilities have realized the benefits of these initial disruptions.

The evolution of the electric grid is being driven by technology ecosystems that orchestrate distributed energy, flexible energy, and mobile energy, all of which are underpinned by resilience. Mahesh Sudhakaran, General Manager, Global Energy, Environment & Utilities Industry for IBM talks about these ecosystems and specifically how the City of Copenhagen is tackling flexibility.

Over the past four years, Consumers Energy has been on a journey to analytics excellence and developing their employees through training and learning initiatives like the Analytics University. Vijoy Matthew, Executive Director in the IT department who is responsible for Product Transformation, Architecture and Quality, talks about the four key elements to their success and what's next.

Nearly two-thirds of low-income households in the US suffer from an energy burden. Baltimore Gas and Electric wanted to offer relief to their customers that struggle to pay bills by using data and predictive analytics to encourage enrollment in bill saving and energy efficiency programs. Amanda Janaski, Manager of Energy Efficiency Programs, BGE, and Paul McDonald, Senior Director, OPower Strategy and Marketing, talk about BGE's approach.

CPS Energy wanted to take a more surgical approach to vegetation management without increasing the budget. Amelia Badders, Director of Enterprise Advanced Analytics, talks about how her team combined lidar data with other data sets in a visualization platform to take a more data-driven approach to vegetation management.

The New York Power Authority wanted to make data more accessible to data scientists working on use cases for various business units. They decided to build a platform that ingestions, sorts, and stores data. Qing Wei, Lead Data Scientist, and Ben Ettlinger, Principle Analyst of Emerging Technology, talk about building and implementing the platform.

When SoCalGas noticed some unusual payment activity on their website, Sempra's Performance Mgmt & Org Strategy team decided to take a closer look at what was going on. They discovered fraudulent activity and decided to address the problem with Machine Learning. David Baron, Director of the team shares their approach to creating an algorithm to help stop the offenders.

This year UAI took its signature UA Summit event virtual and featured 68 utility analytics thought leaders and experts. Each of the sessions was packed full of insights, trends, and challenges shaping the world utility analytics today. What were some of the key takeaways from those sessions? UAI Managing Director, Gina Weber, and EBM Vice President Energy, Mark Johnson, share their top three key takeaways from the event.

This episode is part of UA Summit 2021 - for more great content like this, register here.

This episode is part of UA Summit 2021 - for more great content like this, register here.Sponsored by West Monroe Partners.

This episode is part of UA Summit 2021 - for more great content like this, register here.Sponsored by Burns & McDonnell.

For more from Raiford Smith and Matt Croucher on their experiences at Google, join us online for UA Summit 2021 and our keynote webinar, Lessons Learned from the Customer-Side of Energy Analytics.

For more content like this, register for UA Week: https://bit.ly/UAWPodThis episode is sponsored by Burns & McDonnell.

For more content like this, register for UA Week: https://bit.ly/UAWPod

For more content like this, register for UA Week: https://bit.ly/UAWPodThis podcast is sponsored by IBM.

For more content like this, register for UA Week: https://bit.ly/UAWPod

Hear from utilities on how they are harnessing the power of AI to support customer operations and provide a better customer experience.This podcast is part of UA Summit Reimagined virtual event. Register here.Panelists:Norv Clontz, Director of Data Science Innovation, Duke EnergyRolando Vega, Senior Manager of Advanced Analytics & Intelligence, CPS Energy

This podcast is part of UA Summit Reimagined virtual event. Register here.Panelists:Andy Kapp, Enterprise Architect, EvergyEyob Gebremariam, Senior Data Science Consultant, Duke EnergyTravis Metcalfe, Strategy, Innovation, & Engagement Manager, Tacoma Power

This podcast is part of UA Summit Reimagined virtual event. Register here.Panelists:Kevin McKeand, CEO, OptelosFrank Monforte, Director, Forecasting Solutions, Itron

This podcast  is part of UA Summit Reimagined virtual event. Register here.Panelists:Anthony Graybosch, Senior Data Science Consultant, Exelon UtilitiesJP Dolphin, Director of Data Strategy, Governance & Analytics, PG&EPavel Ozhigin, Director of Data Science, National Grid

This podcast is part of UA Summit Reimagined virtual event. Register here.Panelists:Bryan Sacks, Global Head of Work & Asset Optimization Solutions, IBMHeather Feldman, Director of Innovation, Nuclear, EPRIJohn Russell, Industry Specialist & Principal Consultant, Oracle Utilities

This podcast is brought to you by West Monroe Partners. It is part of UA Summit Reimagined virtual event. Register here.Panelists:Joyce LePage, Manager of Enterprise Data & Analytics, DTE EnergyAJ Morales, Manager of Work Tracking Automation, PG&EJeremy Wortz, Senior Architect, West Monroe Partners

Beyond the Data is launching with full episodes on June 9 during UA Summit Reimagined. Join us for our first virtual event for even more awesome content for and by the utility analytics industry.