AMIPLUS, A New Business Model for Utilities: Sense, Triage & Act

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Moving Beyond Run-to-Fail

Real-time, high-fidelity observability is critical to electrical grid management. SCADA has proven this. Without such observability, operators are forced to wait until the evidence of failure occurs, having no hope of preventing network interruptions through early detection of anomalies.

The problem, however, is that this kind of observability is not ubiquitous throughout the distribution grid, and certainly not real-time. Telemetry coverage typically stops at the substation, leaving the remaining mileage to the customer’s service point highly opaque for utilities. The result is that a portion of the grid remains largely in the Run-to-Fail business model.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) promised change for utilities. But AMI deployment projects, which are large in duration and scale, have typically concluded when the meterto-cash processes are stabilized, and meter-born alerts start to flow (sometimes with unmanageable volumes). The end result thus far is that utilities still lack real-time, high-fidelity observability of the low-voltage grid.

A New Model for Utilities

The Sense, Triage & Act business model is realized with additive software capabilities, preserves your current AMI investment, and represents an emerging state of the art with respect to IoT-enabled utilities. It is a giant leap beyond run-to-fail.

Sense

Real-time detection of anomalies (events) using varied and robust streams of data.

Triage

Highly productive user experiences for diagnostics and decision-making.

Act

Flexible, user-designed business processes.

The Power of Sense, Triage & Act

With AMI and Trynzic, utilities can move their low-voltage grid into the Sense, Triage & Act business model, but only if they move beyond meter-to-cash and towards meter-to-event (Sense), event-to-diagnosis (Triage) and diagnosis-toresolution (Act). Here is a snapshot of what’s possible.

Sense

  • Billing cycle interruptions
  • Missing meter data / reads
  • Meter installation errors
  • Meter created events & alarms (e.g., tamper, temperature, etc.)
  • Cross-system data inconsistencies (e.g., grid connectivity models)
  • Meter voltage anomalies (range tolerance, avg <> min/max, flat line, etc.)
  • Incorporation of LOB data into detection logic
  • Robust detection parameter configuration

Triage

  • Single pane of glass into AMI telemetry & LOB data
  • Automatically refreshed data
  • User-customizable view & queues
  • Asset views
  • Anomaly causation summaries
  • Historical views of asset/premise/account
  • Annotated map views

Act

  • Case management (owner, logging, severity, reminders, coding)
  • Negative redetection auto-closure
  • Workflow designer & workflow engine
  • Interactive workflow trees
  • Manual & automated workflow steps
  • External system transaction orchestration
  • Work approvals

Utilities already have the data (in their AMI systems and line-ofbusiness databases) to achieve the shift to Sense, Triage & Act. What they need is a software solution that can help tame this torrent of data in realtime, affordably, to enable efficient and precise event-driven work.