Case Study: Utility Decision Management
With the help of SmartWorks Compass, Dakota Electric is able to automate repetitive processes, resolve outages faster, reduce load on peak days and minimize energy losses while maximizing the use of assets to better serve its members.
Challenges:
The member-owned, not- for-profit electric distribution cooperative determined it was time to improve data reliability and pursue new technological solutions to track solar resources and monitor load control contributions.
As the power provider to homes, businesses and farms in parts of Dakota, Goodhue, Scott and Rice counties, the cooperative decided to update its response capabilities to track and monitor where losses are occurring throughout their Advanced Grid Infrastructure (AGi) network.
Solution:
The Dakota Electric team opted to utilize the SmartWorks Compass platform to automate workflows and streamline processes across multiple utility systems, all using different technologies.
Dakota Electric uses an extensive range of SmartWorks modules to improve the customer experience and increase operational efficiency. For example, virtual metering calculations are used to aggregate and track distributed energy resources and load control performance. SmartWorks Compass also identifies transformers that need to be replaced, for instance when load has grown too high for the transformer’s rating.
One of the items that Dakota Electric has been tracking since before the AGi meters were installed, is the number of meter reading issues. As expected with the clean meter reading data being supplied by the AGi meters, you can see on the following graph, the amount of estimated bills and billing adjustments has dropped considerably.
With these new insights, Dakota Electric is able to automate repetitive processes, resolve outages faster, reduce load on peak days and minimize energy losses while maximizing the use of assets to better serve its customers and members
Click on the link below to view more results.
BTU is a Municipal Utility that serves rural and city consumers. Essentially we operate as a municipality, as well as, a cooperative. Our community also accommodates a University with a sister junior college. Between the both of them our population increases by 60,000 students, at least each year. This in return causes what we call student rush.
Most of KUB’s customers have, or are in the process of getting, smart-meters installed as part of Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) deployment, however they have a small number of very large C&I customers that account for the majority of KUB’s revenue (60% of revenue).
Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) is a multi-commodity utility that services over 450,000 customers in and around Knoxville, TN.
In 2018, KUB discussed with SmartWorks a challenge they were facing.
Having proven SmartWorks Compass as a platform that enables utility IoT, we intend to significantly expand the number of protocols and devices we support.
If your utility has any meters, sensors, or other devices that communicate using the internet rather than your AMI network, you can use SmartWorks Compass to collect and analyze the data they produce, and to better integrate that data into your enterprise.
