Energy and utility companies can feel powerless in the face of power outages. In addition to feeling the brunt of customer complaints and an onslaught of inquiries, they also face significant impact to operations, including disruption to critical services and the cascading effects of interruptions to essential systems like pumps for water distribution and wastewater treatment.
The costs are real and relentless. In fact, The Uptime Institute estimates that more than two-thirds of outages cost more than $100,000.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that advancements in technology have made it easier than ever for those in the energy and utility industry to manage power outages with infrastructure monitoring tools, including power outage monitoring software.
Read on. Then power up.
Infrastructure monitoring tools for energy and utility companies.
According to monitoring powerhouse Splunk, utility and energy infrastructure monitoring includes the observation, identification, categorization, and analysis of events that affect infrastructure based on performance, uptime, network functionality, capacity, and more.
Outage monitoring tools are especially important for energy and utility companies, as they create resilience via disruption mitigation and avoidance via outage detection, analysis, crew management, and predictive analytics to efficiently respond to power outages across grids.
Features of top systems include:
- Real-time monitoring that tracks power grid status to identify outages as they occur.
- Automated detection that circumvents the need for manual intervention with sensors and data analysis.
- GIS integration to map outages for better visualization and dispatching.
- Customer communication tools, such as notifications to customers affected by outages with estimated restoration times, to improve customer satisfaction and company reputation.
- Crew management capabilities with the ability to assign crews to specific outage locations in order to optimize restoration.
- Predictive analytics that anticipates (or even halts) outages with data that informs and empowers preventive measures.
Fortunately, standout outage monitoring tools exist. Here are the top five:
1. OSIsoft PI SYSTEM (aveva)
This tool connects to sensors, PLCs, and edge devices to provide real-time data from power plants, substations, and grid assets, with native control room SCADA and DCS systems integration, for seamless data flow and a centralized view of infrastructure performance.
Benefits:
- High-Frequency Data Collection: Captures sub-second data from critical assets
- Data Historian: Stores years of operational data for trend analysis
- Event Triggers: Automates alerts when equipment exceeds operational limits
- Asset Framework (AF): Maps data to physical assets, providing operators with real-time asset views
Ability to integrate with Splunk:
With the Optimate Integrator for PI System to Splunk, users can run Splunk searches and run PI expressions to leverage Splunk reporting, alerting, dashboarding, and ML.
SUPERPOWER:
Ability to predict wear on components to extend asset lifespans.
outage outtakes:
The PI System excels at collecting and managing real-time data from sensors and grid equipment with a unified view of grid performance. During outages, PI’s data helps operators find the exact location and cause to speed restoration. It analyzes historical trends and suggests infrastructure upgrades.
Real-world results:
The Tennessee Valley Authority uses OSIsoft PI System to monitor hydroelectric plant, nuclear facility, and transmission network performance. Because data is centralized in real-time across energy assets, the TVA is able detect anomalies before they lead to failures. Case in point: the TVA was able to reroute power and prevent widespread blackouts during a winter storm.
2. Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure
This comprehensive IoT-enabled platform provides real-time monitoring, automation, and control for power distribution.
Benefits:
- Integration: Integrates IoT, automation, and advanced analytics to create smart, self-healing grids
- Continuous Monitoring: Provides visibility into grid health for early fault detection and automatic rerouting of power
- Remote Operation: Reduces the need for on-site crews during extreme weather or emergencies
- Modular Design: Enables utilities to scale solutions based on specific need
Ability to integrate with Splunk:
None at this time.
SUPERPOWER:
Early fault detection and automatic rerouting of power to minimize service disruption.
outage outtakes:
EcoStruxure’s self-healing grid technology automates grid reconfiguration, isolating the affected area and rerouting power to unaffected sections to minimize service disruption. Remote SCADA access and distributed automation principles empowers operators to act independently, while ensuring continued operation even if cloud connectivity is lost.
Real-world results:
Enel, one of the largest electric utilities in Europe, has garnered a 30% improvement in service reliability and faster restoration times, thanks to EcoStruxure’s automated fault detection and grid reconfiguration.
3. IBM Maximo Asset Management
Powered by AI and IoT, Maximo maximizes utility asset management to help utilities predict equipment failures, schedule preventive maintenance, and reduce unplanned outages.
Benefits:
- Comprehensive Asset Tracking and Condition Monitoring: Combined IoT sensor data from utility assets (poles, transformers, underground cables) with AI analytics to predict when and where failures are likely to occur
- Predictive Maintenance Algorithms: Flags equipment nearing failure so crews can schedule repairs outside of high-use times
- Mobile Capabilities: Streamlines repairs and coordination during outage by providing field teams with real-time data
Ability to integrate with Splunk:
The SMS Spunk App for Maximo allows Splunk to ingest and analyze Maximo business object data and automate Maximo work orders based on industrial equipment sensor readings.
SUPERPOWER:
Empowers proactive maintenance to reduce downtime and improve overall grid reliability.
outage outtakes:
Maximo automates and coordinates response efforts, including automated parts and crew scheduling, prioritizing based on asset criticality and customer impact.
Real-world results:
IBM Maximo serves National Grid UK, helping the utility manage and maintain its power distribution assets. Maximo’s IoT-driven maintenance planning has reduced equipment failures by 20%, due in part to the mobile app’s ability to provide field technicians with real-time asset data and repair logs.
4. Splunk
If this name is familiar, there’s a reason. Splunk is widely used by utilities to track grid performance, monitor critical assets, and detect anomalies. By connecting to utility infrastructure through APIs, direct data ingestion from SCADA systems, IoT sensors, and machine logs, as well as integrating with existing grid management software, GIS, and security platforms, Splunk provides real-time insights that help utilities prevent failures and optimize infrastructure.
Benefits:
- Real-time Analytics: Provides live dashboards for visibility of asset performance and grid health
- Predictive Monitoring: Uses AI to detect early signs of equipment wear or issues
- Scalability: Perfect for large data volumes from distributed infrastructure
- Security Integration: Identifies cyber threats to infrastructure
- OT and IT monitoring: Correlates data about weather, equipment, and usage data to predict potential failures
SUPERPOWER:
Integrates historical data to identify recurring fault patterns.
outage outtakes:
Splunk correlates real-time events across substations, transformers, and line sensors to identify outage points, using dashboards and GIS maps to show affected areas and employing ML to classify outages. Splunk also automates alerts to crews and triggers incident workflows.
Real-world results:
Southern California Edison uses Splunk’s ML to help the utility predict failures and detect abnormalities in real time. This has enabled SCE to lower the risk of equipment-related ignitions and unplanned outages.
5. Arcus Data Outage Management Solution
Arcus Data is trusted worldwide for enterprise-class managed services and analytics. Arcus offers special expertise to the utility and energy industry with predictive analytics and infrastructure monitoring and outage management.
Benefits:
- Predictive Infrastructure Health Monitoring Integration: Integrates through data lakes, IoT platforms, and legacy systems using API connectors and data pipelines, and overlays predictive analytics on existing monitoring frameworks
- Machine Learning Models: Leverages AI and machine learning via tailored algorithms to analyze operational data and predict component failures
- Anomaly Detection: Identifies transformer load, line currents, and substation temperature irregularities
- Custom Dashboards: Bespoke visualizations based on asset criticality
- Rapid Deployment: Speeds deployment with ability to layer atop legacy (e.g. SCADA and AMI) systems
Ability to integrate with Splunk:
As an award-winning, Elite Tier Splunk Partner, Arcus leverages hundreds of Splunk use cases, including deployments, cloud migrations, scalability, and automations to help utilities and energy companies improve performance and help Splunk…splunk better.
SUPERPOWER:
Arcus forecasts failures and enhances grid reliability while integrating with existing infrastructure to offer deep insights into equipment performance and operational risk–all without having to build or manage your own infrastructure.
outage outtakes:
The Arcus outage management system consolidates data sources, monitoring, and alerting to increase visibility into key outage-related datasets, thus improving outage response, enabling utilities and energy companies to achieve significant gains in SLAs, and optimizing better internal and external communication. Along with flexible reporting and alerts, Arcus helps those in the energy and utility sector proactively resolve outages and stay ahead of compliance regulations.
Real-world results:
Arcus partnered with a large United States utility company, using machine learning models to analyze data from weather patterns, equipment performance, and historical outages to proactively address weak points in infrastructure, improve grid reliability, and forecast transformer failures three months in advance. This enabled the utility to reduce downtime by 25%.
Arcus: Proving that knowledge is power for utilities and energy companies.
Arcus is committed to helping those in the utility and energy sector power insights, efficiency, compliance, and infrastructure and outage management and prevention. Arcus provides products and services that improve operational technology, cybersecurity, analytics, monitoring, and the leverage of metadata, and is committed to providing exceptional value to customers.
This dedication is evidenced by Arcus’ Data Hackathon, an off-site designed to help energy and utility companies solve real-world problems, as well as the SEUWG (Splunk Energy & Utilities Working Group), a forum for an exchange of ideas, content, and assistance.
You can join the LinkedIn Group here and receive access to the exclusive SEUWG portal.
When you’re ready to see how Arcus can help you manage and prevent outages, reach out to us here.