Written by Trevor St. Germain, CTO Axia Software
Electrical utilities around the globe are facing increasing pressure to make smart decisions when it comes to upgrading their aging power grids. On the one hand, they must deal with the external demands of reliability standards, mounting environmental compliance and more prescriptive regulatory oversight, and on the other they must align their asset investment planning (AIP) to meet internal corporate objectives.
Bridging this gap becomes even more challenging due to the lack of visibility needed to optimize spend levels while mitigating risk. Unfortunately, a utility’s operations staff often makes asset investment decisions that are hit and miss, and frequently out of sync with executive strategic aspirations.
If this sounds like being between a rock and a hard place, it need not be thanks to emerging software tools that can dynamically manipulate multi-variable data in real time. When such software tools are properly developed and leverage existing relevant data sets, they can enable utilities to streamline correlations and extend visibility, and, as a result, optimize asset investment decisions. In deploying such software tools, the top 3 actions that utilities can take to optimize asset investment decisions are:
- Adopt Common Technology Platform that “brings the process to life” as it establishes common rules for drawing from common sources of relevant data and a regimen for contrasting and correlating various opportunities to determine which will best meet common goals.
- Establish Closed Loop Process that brings corporate objectives and new opportunities in line with decisions about when/which assets should be replaced/upgraded with limited resources while feeding back results to all decision makers to validate effective alignment.
- Drive Transparent Communications with user friendly interfaces that is top down, bottom up and across the organization, which expedites and simplifies practical reporting relevant to each group and those in between using common language (including utility-specific jargon).
By deploying software tools with a common platform, utilities can transform multiple data sets into multi-variable optimizations that can be factored into multifaceted business and operations plans. While optimizing AIP decision-making, multi-variable optimization techniques can ensure that each asset investment aligns with corporate objectives that must address stakeholder influences, earnings and profitability expectations, customer satisfaction and environmental regulations as well as the collective impact of these factors and others on risk mitigation.