Digital Digest: Monthly Digest of Insights Shared by Your Peers in the Energy Central Intelligent Utility Network – December 22, 2020

Welcome to the newly redesigned Digital Utility Group roundup, Digital Digest. As always, your fellow group members are paying close attention to digital utility trends and sharing their insights. This month’s selection includes information about modern asset inspection methods, the use of data analytics to help utility customers during the pandemic, and more. Be sure to like and comment on your favorite posts. Happy reading!

New Inroads for Electric Vehicles

Edward Webster

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/o/franklin-energy/new-inroads-electric-vehicles

As the U.S. federal government is in transition, states and corporations are stepping in to create solid strategies to combat climate change. One area in which companies are moving forward is transportation, which is the single largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S. Here, Edward Webster, Senior Director of Business Development at Franklin Energy explains how two sectors, in particular — ridesharing and waste management — are making investments in the fight against climate change.

A Modern Approach to Asset Inspection

Duncan Long

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/o/clevest/modern-approach-asset-inspection

In this piece, Duncan Long, Senior Product Line Manager at Clevest notes the importance of asset management in utility operations. While acknowledging the challenges of overseeing a range of equipment and site conditions, he notes the shortcomings in traditional asset inspection methodology. He also describes modern models that are making the process easier for both field and back-office workers.

PG&E Customer Misassignment Correction Initiative

Devon Yates

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/c/iu/pge-customer-misassignment-correction-initiative

In many utilities, operators know there are inaccuracies in the association between customer meters and transformers. Given the need to correct this association so the right customers can be notified in advance of a safety shutoff, PG&E initiated a project to identify misassignments, recommend corrections, and prioritize workflows to review and correct errors. In this article — which is part of Energy Central’s Data Analytics & Intelligence special issue — Devon Yates, Principal Data Scientist at PG&E describes the project in detail.

Data Analytics as a Compass To Navigate the COVID 19 Storm

Andrew Braeger

Link to original article: https://energycentral.com/c/iu/data-analytics-compass-navigate-covid-19-storm

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) customers had been experiencing economic hardship, given that 20% of Tacoma residents fall below the poverty line. Once the pandemic started, their challenges only became worse. In this post, which is part of Energy Central’s Data Analytics & Intelligence special issue, Andrew Braeger, Data Engineering Manager at Tacoma Public Utilities, and his co-authors describe how utility leaders responded. Actions included developing a COVID-19 recovery dashboard, establishing emergency assistance, and crafting an advanced analytics use case to predict future customer needs.

Thanks again for reading this edition of Digital Digest! The authors listed above are eager to hear your thoughts and questions, so don’t hesitate to engage them. And if you want your content to be featured in this spot in future issues, be sure to publish your posts within the Digital Utility Community.

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