Whether it’s a smart water meter or a complex combustion turbine, expectations of reliability for complex, connected machines have increased across the board. Due to higher visibility and the availability of advanced analytics, companies know they should be able to identify emerging safety and reliability issues in these assets. By
As utilities expand analytic capabilities into more areas of the business, the reality of the data management challenge becomes very real. Most have accepted the era of "big data." But what about the quality of that big data? Is it reliable? What about the governance? Have the processes changed since
In many ways it’s open season for open data; open data is one of those phrases we hear a lot but it’s not always appreciated as having value. The fact that it’s openly available is seen by some as proof that there’s no value in the data – unlike, for
Whether it’s to reduce churn in competitive markets or to elevate customer satisfaction rankings in regulated markets, customer analytics is hot right now in utilities. However, the complexity that utilities have built into their processes and technologies over the past decades makes customer analytics a more challenging issue to tackle
Ask a utility executive about “the utility of the future” and you’re likely to get as many different answers as people you speak to. Whether they’re energy service providers, customer energy advocates or masters of microgrids, the mechanism for maintaining utility revenues is uncertain. At a recent meeting of the
In the energy industry, oil and gas companies as well as utilities are struggling with many changes at once. First, they're facing what the oil and gas industry has coined "the big crew change," meaning the retirement of those with the most skills and experience on how to run their
In the game of energy forecasting, you’re never 100 percent right. And for developing countries, forecasters face rapidly expanding economies and high political expectations. Such is the case in India. With its relatively young population (median age of 26), India is expected to take over China as the world’s most
At SAS Global Forum 2014 customers were asked to describe SAS in one word and they came up with quite a few including awesome, powerful, data, fun, easy, and of course statistics, analytics, and PROC. Then I gave it some thought on what one word would I choose to describe SAS. This
What's the differences between predictive analytics and basic reporting? Predictive analytics provides insight about what will happen in the future. Basic reporting only looks at past performance. Why is this difference difficult to grasp? It's partly because transitioning to predictive analytics requires change. And most people don't embrace change. Take
As more and more data is being collected and analyzed, it becomes even more important to have a strategy in place that will allow you to get value out of your data. Since it's humanly impossible for your brain alone to process fast streaming data, an event stream processing (ESP) engine
