Empowering Awareness of the Grid through Advanced Analytics & Forecasting

Asset management (AM) represents a critical tool in helping utilities to build awareness across their distribution systems such that they can optimize their capital & maintenance investment plans to manage and mitigate potential risk & reliability impacts.

Traditionally, utilities have focused on building decision-making analytics at the asset level – also known as Asset Awareness – where asset registry, in-field inspection & testing data are collectively leveraged to produce age, condition and risk-based analytics for individual assets. Awareness also involves how different stakeholders contribute towards asset data governance and data quality improvements, leading to enhanced and collaborative strategies, decision-making and outcome reporting.

The introduction of new electrification technologies (EVs, DERs, microgrids, etc.) as well as specialized customers (e.g. data centers), have collectively reshaped how utilities examine and assess load & capacity forecasting. Furthermore, the increase in frequency and severity of extreme environmental and external impacts, including extreme winds, temperatures, ice storms, flooding and wildfires, as well as physical & cybersecurity attacks, are resulting in changes to AM planning practices, and requiring utilities to expand their awareness “beyond the asset” – to the entire grid as a whole.

In parallel, utilities continue to encounter a host of often-competing challenges, including the need to manage and balance CAPEX and OPEX spending in the face of rising material and labour costs, continued management of asset & system risks to keep the lights on, as well as ever-increasing regulatory pressures to maintain rate affordability for customers.

This panel will bring together leaders across the utility spectrum to showcase recent advancements in decision-making to empower awareness at the Grid, Situational and Corporate levels. This panel will share how utilities have advanced their underlying data strategies, leading to data ownership & data quality improvements. Ultimately, this session will provide and empower utilities to make the right decisions to the right assets at the right time.