The term ‘Smart Grid’ represents the significant technology developments that are underway at many utilities today. Utilities are not only implementing new meters in homes and businesses, but also installing new devices along the power lines and transmission networks.The capabilities that these new technologies enable – such as time-of-use energy pricing, sophisticated outage management and theft detection – are intended to help meet growing energy demands and extend the life of an ageing power grid. However, none of these benefits can be realised without the application of analytics.
“Deregulation, globalisation and sustainability have changed the operating landscape for electric utilities,” says Gerald Naidoo, CEO of Logikal Consulting. “Just as the optimist seeks a silver lining in every cloud, leading utilities are taking advantage of the confluence of market forces to modernise the data management and analytical capabilities of their organisations. Smart meters and grids in themselves do not bring actionable insight or competitive differentiation, it is through business intelligence (BI) and analytics that a utility becomes intelligent.”
While Logikal Consulting has employed its world-class BI solutions at utilities across Africa, the company is also helping these corporations improve their carbon footprints and optimise their sustainability. Through its partnership with global analytics leader SAS, Logikal Consulting has implemented comprehensive sustainability management solutions, allowing utilities across the continent to balance financial, engineering, social and environmental considerations and to align resources with strategy and optimise organisational performance.
“We are pleased to partner with Logikal Consulting in this space and look forward to working closely in the African market together,” says Kroshlen Moodley, regional head of utilities at SAS. “The future breed of solutions being driven by SAS within the utilities market is through high performance analytics (HPA) solutions that support grid, appliance and cloud architecture. Logikal Consulting’s expertise in these areas, and its longstanding partnership with SAS, made it a good fit as a partner in this arena.”
“By following a fragmented IT model that is inflexible and ultimately very costly, utilities are faced with high resource costs and inefficient IT infrastructure. Our vision of Green IT is not just about virtualisation, cloud computing, hardware or software, but a 360 degree integrated approach to ensure full utilisation of resources in the most cost-effective way, thereby reducing measurable bottom line and carbon footprint,” says Mahesh Chavan, CTO at Logikal Consulting. He explains that while going green is about reducing power, reducing carbon emissions and driving down the energy cost out of IT infrastructure, this is achieved by interweaving many relevant technology strategies within the utility company.
Naidoo adds that the first step is for utilities to be aware of current performance and understand the opportunities to improve. “Today, data about sustainable performance is disparately tracked in multiple operational systems or rudimentary accounting files. The increasing frequency of reporting exacerbates this pain. Often, utilities do not have the enterprise tools to gather and manage this important data to derive the real value from their improvement projects.”
Logikal Consulting therefore provides a solution which allows clients to capture and organise information and derive real value from it by applying the power of advanced analytics, predictive modelling, forecasting and optimisation. The company’s expertise in this sector has provided utilities with applied analytics to determine the best-case scenario for delivering reliable power to end consumers.
“Data analytics drive down costs and improve service delivery quality for telecommunications providers and can do the same for utilities managing similarly complex networks. Utilities often underestimate the ability to use vast resources of new data to optimise their daily business activities. As a result, valuable information remains trapped in silos and utilities continue to underperform in critical areas such as meter data quality, asset management and customer service. Our approach is aiding a new generation of energy practitioners to enable transformation and deliver business value from IT investments,” concludes Naidoo.
For more information contact Logikal Consulting +27 (0)11 100 0651, [email protected], www.logikalconsulting.com
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