COMMERCIAL FEATURE Revenue Assurance Solution A frica’s average economic growth in 2013 was 4%. This is 1% higher than the growth of the global economy. Despite global recession, Africa is growing at an acceptable rate; however this growth rate varies between different countries and regions. In 2014 the estimated growth rate is 5% and it is expected to be between 5% and 6% for 2015 1 . To keep this favourable trend going African countries should develop their infrastructure; for example invest in more clean energy which will play an important role in the future. As economies grow, demand for energy by industries and residential customers increases. On the other hand, a great deal of existing electricity and water infrastructure was deployed over half a century ago. Faced with modernisation and encountering new technologies such as renewable resources, micro-grids, smart metering and distribution management systems, utility companies have another challenge, especially when they try to accommodate these new technologies with their old infrastructure. It is clear that utilities need to invest in their infrastructures and redesign existing processes. Since utilities lose significant amounts of money due to energy losses, if they can prevent such losses they will earn the funds required for investment in modernisation. Revenue leakage points or losses can be divided into two different categories; technical and non-technical. On the technical side utilities mostly face inherent losses because of conductors’ electrical resistance or the 1 African Economic Outlook 2014, Global Value Chains and Africa’s Industrialisation, African Development Bank Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Development Program, 2014. formation of magnetic fields around transmission lines. They also encounter losses caused by non-optimal grid and energy management. This latter part is completely avoidable with optimisation of the power grid operation, network reconfiguration, network re-conducting, load balancing, load management, smart management of distribution transformers (to avoid overloading) and power factor compensation (by installing capacitors). The second category of losses is non-technical losses. These can be due to human errors, device malfunctioning and illegal equipment manipulation which is mostly done by third parties. Measurement of non-technical losses is difficult but in the event of detection and clarification these are completely avoidable. What is the Solution? All industries that have been widely using IT infrastructure over the past few years show rapid growth in: efficiency, reliability, productivity and also in user/ operator/customer satisfaction. Using new technologies in utility companies can change their situation as well. For the utilisation of technology in utilities two factors should be considered. One is increasing visibility and manageability of the power grid and equipment; the second is better interaction with consumers and changing them from passive elements in the power industry to active elements. Hexing, after years of experience and work with different utilities around the world, not only as a vendor and solution provider but also as a partner and consultant, provides a wide variety of systems that can help utilities to improve their business. To guarantee efficiency and prevent islanding operations the company provides a complete integration solution that unifies a utility’s activities. The most important aspect of Hexing’s systems is that all of them are equipped with a common interface model (CIM) interface. It means with its platform not only can all of its systems be integrated and work together but this platform can unify all existing and future systems the utility intends to use. Hexing Revenue Assurance Solution: HexGrid HexGrid introduces a business-like process to protect utilities’ revenue through reducing losses. The first step is loss diagnosis. In this step the network should be studied and loss points should be detected. Then their value should be calculated. For this purpose HexGrid is equipped with two intelligent systems; transformer monitoring and high voltage metering. The transformer monitoring system can detect and report on the following items: a. Transformer operational status; b. Network power quality; c. Line losses; d. Network outage; e. Abnormal situations; With high voltage metering all feeder lines will be monitored using the ultimate tamper proof solution and direct connection to lines. These two systems prepare valuable information about the network; and with data gathered from field and consumption in each transformer area, losses in each part of the network can be diagnosed. The second step is a cost/benefit analysis. After diagnosis, loss information is fed into a cost/benefit module for analysis, which results in prioritising actions. According to the cost analysis HexGrid revenue assurance process. 64 ESI AFRICA ISSUE 2 2014