Utilities Management
A trusted solution for ANY organisation looking to improve risk management, increase innovationand make meaningful data-driven decisions.
Affectli for utilities management
INTRODUCTION
Government, Public Services, Regulatory Bodies and Commissions will need to integrate their respective systems. Breaking down silos by seamlessly connecting and streamlining data and process flows will uproot outdated systems and practices, replacing them with new models that result in a more efficient process and effective business models.
Government policy is known to drive some of the largest IoT projects worldwide due to the positive Economic, Societal and Environmental impact that digitisation delivers. In order for organisations to understand digitisation trends, they would need to leapfrog over yesterday’s legacy IT systems, straight into more agile, digital-age models such as cloud computing and cognitive technologies.
Regulatory reform has often been part of governments’ approach to job growth. Much of the recent focus has been on replacing paper forms with websites and e-forms, overlaid with tools such as rules engines. But governments rarely have the resources to timely address complaints, often taking months or years to investigate long after the damage was done. Governments are starting to take advantage of digitization to better regulate companies and enable economic growth. Many reforming regulators use digital approaches to more effectively target risks, while reducing the compliance burden. This is a disruptive approach to regulatory reform, using data analytics tools coupled with streamlined reporting and third-party data to focus regulatory enforcement on risks.
Considerations
The unprecedented convergence of forces reshaping the electric power industry—from moderating demand and aging infrastructure, to environmental mandates and the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DER)—requires an increasingly flexible and robust grid. The grid is evolving from a one-way system where power flows from centralized generation stations to consumers, to a platform that can detect, accept, and control decentralized consumption and production assets so that power and information can flow as needed in multiple directions.
This common industry vision is known as the “intelligent grid.”
This intelligent grid builds on the industry’s innovative heritage of increasing interconnectedness using sensors, “smart” devices, and networked operations, and achieving it, requires a myriad of technologies, including numerous IoT applications.
At the heart of these advances are exponential technologies like sensors, robotics, and advanced analytics, which together, form advanced, interconnected systems capable of quickly analyzing large amounts of data. These critical systems are the sensory organs, nerves, and brains capable of giving our electric system the flexibility and agility necessary to enable ideas like a self-healing grid and plug-and-play generation—an intelligent grid.
The Solution
AFFECTLI is the overlaying layer of these systems and devices which brings a plethora of disparate systems and silos of information together into one management view in real-time, ensuring that contextual collaboration is optimised, across all data sources:
- Installation of the core application and database using OS;
- Integration of AIS data into the dashboard;
- Integrations of devices / systems & databases into the Mi-Stream in order to bring all the data into one platform;
- Real-time asset monitoring dashboard;
- Digitising computerised processes in Designer;
- Regulation reporting tool; and
- Digital Twin.
THE AFFECTLI ORCHESTRATION
Energy supply, maintenance and regulation solutions can be built within the AFFECTLI platform, and configured in line with the organisation’s own business process flows, herewith, to name a few:
- Maintenance & Management of power sites and infrastructure
- Digitised processes such as:
- Asset Management
- Predictive Maintenance
- Workforce Management
- Fault reporting
- Fault rectification (field services)
- Demand Planning
- Predictive outages
- Delivery & quality control
- Measurement of meters
- Consumption Management
- Smart Electricity Meter Integration
- Readings for power delivery
- Readings of power strength
- Asset utility consumption
- Threshold Management
- Asset Security
- Power Factor Correction
- Digitised processes such as:
In order to visualise the organisation’s state of play, live and in real-time, AFFECTLI allows for GIS interface mapping, using AI and current & historical data to deliver predictive data in the form of reports. These customisable reports are available in relation to geo locations, and displayed in any format required. Examples of such reports are as follows:
- Reports of consumption, usage and service delivery
- Real time visualisation of GPS & Threshold management
- Maintenance scheduling
- Usage & consumption trends and patterns
- Pricing structures across networks and grids
CASE STUDY IN A SIMILAR ENVIRONMENT
Their reservoirs are measured and monitored by Programmable Logic Controllers and historically, system operators and management would receive a stream of numbers and alerts when alarms were triggered. They would have to send out emergency shutdown notifications, down tools and manually open and close pumps to ensure that sufficient water was delivered to their customer base. The result is that they were reacting to daily crisis management, as opposed to service delivery through a more effective, planned, proactive and controlled approach to their business.
To ensure they would meet service delivery and best business practices while minimising downtime to providing uninterrupted services and improved customer satisfaction, they implemented AFFECTLI to make them more efficient in monitoring and managing water levels in their most critical reservoir tanks.
The client´s IoT endpoints and assets were integrated into the AFFECTLI platform to give them an overview of their business in real-time using GIS and geo-reporting tools.
Within the Situational Awareness feature of AFFECTLI, icons representing the client’s assets change colour when a fault occurs or an alarm is triggered, making it easier for them to identify and address problems as and when they arise. The status colour changes in real time, as the issues are resolved or escalated.
Pre-defined parameters enable processes to manually or automatically be started, when alarms are triggered. These processes are in the form of a work card / or ticket which is generated and sent to the nearest and most qualified field service agent for attention.
With AFFECTLI supporting an agile environment, this feature also provides for contextual collaboration on all tasks, ensuring that the right people get the right information at the right time, as well as provides historical data and a full audit trail.
Having applied calculations to historical data received from signals and alarms, we were able to establish a predictive pattern of when a reservoir would be empty based on the rate of consumption.
We then applied a parameter to notify the client 3 hours ahead of time that the reservoir would be reaching critically low levels, providing them the tools for a proactive approach to avoid unnecessary service interruptions and emergency shutdowns. The next step was to include a summary of all the water levels within the reservoirs. This was published every 2 hours to their mobile devices, giving them an accurate overview of water level readings of their reservoirs.
Before the implementation of AFFECTLI, our client was reporting 5 to 6 low level alarms daily on their critical tanks, with the average level of those reservoirs being low, and marginally above empty. Within 8 days, this was reduced to only one low level alarm.
By implementing an effective Digital Transformation solution like AFFECTLI that is agile and scalable, as well as device and system agnostic, it provides an organisation with smart technology and connected systems that are the very foundation for business efficiency.