How Digital Transformation Improves Utility Operations

Managing an electric utility requires a complex choreography of technology, data, processes, and people. While keeping existing infrastructure in service, you’re already planning and building what’s next. The plan-design-build-operate-maintain lifecycle is a never-ending marathon.

At the same time, managing the electric grid becomes more challenging every day. An increasingly complicated distribution network in combination with an ever-growing amount of data makes the situation even more challenging. Additionally, traditional ways of operating in siloed departments are no longer working. Without a shared network model supporting your enterprise, inefficiency and risk proliferate. In other words, what got your utility to the present will not be sufficient as you move into the future.

This makes it all the more imperative to pursue digital transformation, especially when it comes to your network model. The traditional network model data was driven by separate business functions split along the lines of building new capabilities and operating what you have. It has evolved in response to tactical business needs rather than from a holistic strategy.

However, by taking a proactive approach to data modernization, you can create a unified network model that brings together workflows, unifies GIS and ADMS systems, and optimizes processes across the entire network asset lifecycle.

In the planning stage, if you lack a shared, up-to-date view of your network model and cannot use it across your organization, everything you do becomes more expensive and time-consuming. A data-enabled utility network model not only helps with decisions about where to locate assets, but also how they should connect, how they are likely to perform, and what future demand patterns should be accounted for.

In the design stage, the objective is to optimize capital investments while supporting the network expansion and decarbonization strategies. It’s important to provide designers with a single view of the network that allows for end-to-end network asset lifecycle management. More efficient tools and workflows can significantly increase productivity.

In the build stage, the ability to provide a digital design view of the network allows construction crews to provide data updates and redline notes or sketches in real-time. This information is invaluable to establish clear communication between field crews and design and keep construction projects running smoothly.

In the operate stage, streamlining processes through a single source of data and a common network view enable sharing of the as-built and future design changes through workflow-driven events and reduced data lags. This eliminates redundant business processes and error-prone duplicate data maintenance and tedious manual data synchronization. A common network model can support the seamless interoperability of applications.

The use of advanced data collection tools established in the planning phase improves the efficiency of planned and unplanned maintenance. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in a shared network model at this stage helps optimize maintenance activities to increase uptime and decrease costs. It also enables intelligent process automation to accelerate service and repairs.

Your network model data is one of, if not the single most important pillar in enabling your energy transition. A data-enabled, unified utility network model with end-to-end capabilities creates a single, shared source of truth, seamlessly connects teams for maximum agility and responsiveness, reduces operational costs through improved maintenance and reliability, and enhances safety while reducing risk and meeting regulatory requirements.