IBM has announced a new cloud based analytics platform for Energy and Utility companies, with the platform designed to improve decision-making throughout the entire energy ecosystem.
The platform analytics will be available across energy generation, transmission and distribution, in addition to delivering situational awareness from high volumes of data.
Energy and Utility companies are challenged to deliver reliable, affordable and sustainable energy in a competitive market. Therefore, scalable and data-driven insights will help to modernise the utility network and improve power generation.
The National Grid worked with IBM to improve decision making around asset health and maintenance policies, David Wright, director of electricity transmission asset management, National Grid, said: "We needed the ability to sweep up all the data on our assets across 350 different sites and bring that together into a single portal to then do further analysis and deliver value for customers moving forward."
The National Grid has now shifted to a condition-based preventive maintenance due to working with IBM. Jon Fenn, head of networking engineering, National Grid, said: "We have a place you go where you can see everything you want to know about the assets. We are also getting the ability to see asset conditions — a really useful way for us to manage risk in this business."
IBM Insights Foundation for Energy can be used to get a 360-degree view from individual transformer level to the entire grid. Delivered via the SoftLayer infrastructure from IBM, the platform will couple software for data integration and visualisation with advanced analytics.
The system will enable renewable forecasting and integration to the network, as well as supporting custom analytics developments.
Asset analytics will include insights for enabling predictive maintenance, measuring asset health, assessing risk and consequences in real-time. Data history, maintenance records and operating condition data can all be found in one place.
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Brad Gammons, general manager, Energy and Utilities Industry at IBM, said: "IBM Insights Foundation for Energy centers on the idea that the energy and utilities industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation from generation to supply. Utilities need flexible and comprehensive tools to help simplify the complexity, exploit the volumes of data, and create a profound shift in how they operate day-to-day."
"Using a proven software foundation, we can deliver essential analysis to improve and automate complex decision-making that translates into near-real-time insights for energy companies."
