8 Virtual Events You Need to Attend This Year
When COVID-19 novel coronavirus put a hard stop to most in-person tradeshows and conferences this year, organizers quickly retooled many events as virtual. Whether this change is long-standing or just a blip in event-planning history, only time will tell. While...
How to Modernize Your Distribution Network without Breaking a Sweat, or the Bank? Ask DTE Energy
We often take it for granted that when we flick a switch or push a button, the lights will automatically turn on, phones will recharge and computers will power up. We also expect a continuous and reliable delivery of electricity to our homes and businesses. For...
How Utilities Can Leverage Data Analytics in a Pandemic World
The global COVID-19 pandemic is changing how we live and work in ways that are not yet well understood. Fear-based behavior modifications like additional hand-washing and social distancing may become ingrained in our culture, much like the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic...
5 Reasons RF Communications Networks Help Rural Electric Co-ops
Implementing advanced metering infrastructure using wireless RF-based networks poses special challenges for rural electric cooperatives. Many cooperatives stretch across thousands of miles, with great distances between individual meters and groups of meters. This fact...
How User-Centered Design Serves Utilities
With our newest software headend solution, AclaraONE™, we have brought a host of new capabilities to our customers, based on their requests and feedback to us. These include the abilities to collect data from all devices in the distributions network, to view and use...
The Future of Water AMI Is Now
Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) has reduced labor requirements, improved customer service and billing, and provided a baseline of information for better data management. But how much more can AMI do, and how can water utilities take maximum advantage? Check out...
How Do Combo Utilities Gain Value from AMI? Ask Dothan Utilities
Multi-service utilities – those that sell power, water, gas, or any combination of the three – have many opportunities to reduce costs and pass on rate savings to customers. If they can pick one AMI system that fits all commodities they sell, they can benefit from...
Are Virtual Assistants the Future of Consumer Engagement?
As of this past January, Google had some 500 million people using its virtual assistant, Google Assistant, every month. Last January, Amazon was boasting that it had sold 100 million devices that let people have their virtual assistant, Alexa, turn off lights, turn on...
Can Smart Grid Sensors Solve Today’s Distribution Grid Monitoring Challenges?
Have you ever gotten stuck in traffic? You know there’s a problem, but you can’t see far enough ahead to know what it is or the best options for avoiding a three-hour delay. Electric distribution engineers face a similar problem. The decades-old substations and major...
Optimized Operations: It’s Easier with Analytics
Utilities are on board with the benefits analytics can bring. According to a 2018 BRIDGE Index Utility survey of some 20,000 north American utility workers, use of asset-related analytics rose 55% between 2016 and 2017, while grid-related analytics use rose 17% in...
7 No-Fail Tips to Optimize the Grid
If you looked up the word “optimization” in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, you’d find a definition sure to make engineers smile: Optimization equals “an act, process or methodology of making something as fully perfect, functional or effective as possible.” Of...
5 Essential Features of an Effective Customer Portal
According to a recent report published by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative, utility customers have a 75% satisfaction with their utility provider, second only to banks. The reason for this level of satisfaction? A combination of high-touch interactions with...