Note: This is the second post in a series featuring analytics leaders in the utility industry. St. Louis is home to Anheuser Busch, the legendary Cardinals baseball team, and Ameren, where analytics rocks. More on this later. Ameren is a large investor-owned utility that serves St. Louis and the surrounding
Author
Note: This is the first in a series of profiles of leaders in today’s utility analytics marketplace. “My job is to make people uncomfortable with the way they do things today. Transformation implies a revolution, not small incremental changes, and today the big revolution in any industry is in data,"
Note: Today’s utility industry is in upheaval. All of the assumptions the business has run on have been turned on their heads. This post is the third in a three-part series looking at how analytics are helping utilities navigate this challenging landscape and find new opportunities for improvements in operations,
Note: Today’s utility industry is in upheaval. All of the assumptions the business has run on have been turned on their heads. This post is the second in a three-part series looking at how analytics are helping utilities navigate this challenging landscape and find new opportunities for improvements in operations,
Note: Today’s utility industry is in upheaval. All of the assumptions the business has run on have been turned on their heads. This post is the first in a three-part series looking at how analytics are helping utilities navigate this challenging landscape and find new opportunities for improvements in operations,
Remember when electric vehicles were a new thing? Just a few years ago, everywhere we turned there were opinions, white papers, and articles espousing the wonders of electric vehicles, and an equal chorus of voices warning of the dangers and challenges of electric vehicles. Would they blow up half of
As the old saying goes, the only constant is change. The corollary that I’ll add is this: and the pace of change feels like it's directly proportional to Moore’s Law. Utilities used to be favorites for conservative investors. Smooth. Steady. When there was change, it was incremental. But today, uncertainty
The paradigm in which we have all lived in an electrified world is changing. The convergence of technology, changing business models, and increasing customer expectations means the way utilities have operated for the last 100+ years must change. Further, this change must embrace where the operations side of the business
After a few tough years in the trenches, analytics leaders in utilities are emerging and making a difference as their utilities vie to stay relevant in the ever-changing energy landscape. At the core of this emergence are leaders that are embracing open analytics platforms and pushing analytics to the edge.
There is an expression in the military that goes something like this: Military leaders train and prepare for the next war using available information, which typically means they're planning for the last (previous) war -- and that's a recipe for disaster. So what does this have to do with utilities
Regulations, corporate drivers, leadership and market influences have combined to produce a patchwork of uneven progress on initiatives such as distributed generation, customer choice, asset optimization and the industrial Internet of Things. These initiatives all rely on analytics to gain the most return on investment. To better understand organizational readiness
Operators of transmission networks and wholesale electric markets – ISOs (Independent System Operator) and RTOs (Regional Transmission Organizations) – have undergone sweeping changes in recent years, and the pace won’t be letting up anytime soon. With opportunities ranging from the growth of renewables to newly data-rich operating environments, and challenges
Do you remember the 90s? It seemed like every company and organization had some sort of strategic plan that had “2000” in its title. And they were all going to achieve and exceed these Year 2000 goals … if their systems didn’t crash at 12:00:01 on January 1, 2000! So
It’s no secret that the US energy landscape has undergone massive changes in recent years: the emergence of cost-effective renewables, the natural gas revolution, the wide-scale penetration of intelligence across energy delivery networks, and soon a new resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. All of these changes are impacting different pockets of
Utility leaders are struggling with a world that's quickly changing and barely recognizable from the one they knew growing up. Many of the old assumptions are gone, and the business model upon which careers have been built is on the verge of disappearing. So what does the internet of things
Yesterday I opened up the Wall Street Journal and found the usual mix of ads from major technology vendors touting their IoT (Internet of Things) prowess, and claiming they all have the secret sauce to make all of our IoT dreams come true. Where do I sign up?! Meanwhile, back
Utilities, like all large organizations, spend a lot of time and resources on strategy. But how do utility analytics leaders ensure that their efforts are connected to this high-level vision? On June 28th in Los Angeles, a small gathering of utility executives and analytics leaders met to discuss and explore
Over the last ten years, utilities around the world have have invested billions of dollars in the Internet of Things (IoT). Better known as smart grid and smart meter initiatives, this massive intelligent infrastructure is moving utilities into a future that’s beginning to look radically different from the century-old business model
To some people, electricity is like air: There for the taking. For others, circumventing paying a utility bill is a just cause, sticking it to “Big Energy” for their perceived transgressions against customers. In either case, not paying for energy is considered fraud and a crime. In some states, energy