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BIG DATA – ANALYTICS The changing role of data in the utility: The future of analytics Metering International will be addressing the challenges of Big Data across all editions of the magazine, focusing on various elements of the Big Data spectrum. This particular edition focuses on some of the issues around Data Analytics and the benefits these can bring to the utility sector, along with some of the headaches executives are experiencing when it comes to understanding the role of analytics in their organization. How is the utility industry evolving? In a recent survey, utility companies were asked a number of questions with a view to determining the evolution of the industry and the amount of change that is happening within the industry. What does this change look like from the inside, and how are utilities adapting? What’s driving the decisions and strategies of utilities today? Most of the responding utilities were distributors or municipal — but others were retailers, investor-owned, or cooperatives. The results can apply generally across the global utility industry. Who’s making the major decisions? Utility business managers, followed by IT departments, are generally most involved with core decisions that drive adoption of new approaches to solving utility specific problem sets. What do utilities want? Across all geographical regions, utilities report that their main business motivators are delivering a high level of service and protecting assets. Increasingly, customer engagement is seen as an important way of maintaining excellent levels of service. As consumers become more educated around energy conservation, utilities are both challenged and ever-ready to deliver a solution that will meet needs and budgets. 56 Additional requirements of asset protection and loss reduction were key to the utilities’ needs. Protecting assets brings a twofold benefit for utilities and customers and taking timely steps to maintain infrastructure reduces outages. Addressing losses – and consequently the risks introduced with tampered assets – helps lower the impacts to businesses’ bottom line. Data and sharing insight can help New technology brings great opportunity to capitalize on the value of data to drive better decisions, while simultaneously posing technical integration challenges that are unique to each utility’s operational environment. The lack of visibility across a complex network of systems and applications poses the biggest challenge to utilities. Not knowing what is a systemic issue vs. “corner cases” leaves too much guesswork in the job of allocating resources. Why change can be slow Customers expect services to be reliable, so utilities are risk averse when it comes to affecting operational flow. This makes it hard for utilities to decide when it is the right time to shift to a new way of doing business. The costs of new solutions are one factor that may delay rollout, but the “unknown” of exactly which solution is best can delay decisions to acquire solutions. With the introduction of solutions for analytics and equipment load management, utilities are gaining new insight from big data. This yields faster analysis and even faster decisions to upgrade equipment at risk of failing, as well as easier spotting of energy theft that impacts the rates that all consumers pay for energy. METERING INTERNATIONAL ISSUE - 4 | 2013