I worked for a power company for two decades. I observed a lot of believing. Employees believed they were making the right decisions about investments, restoration, planning, and operations. Often, those beliefs were based on past experiences, anecdotal events, biases, and cultural norms. While utilities have been using GIS for decades, they are increasingly relying on the insight capability of GIS, switching from a practice of believing to one of understanding.
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Maps Tell a Compelling Story
An example of believing versus understanding is the answer to this question utilities face more and more. Does your utility treat all segments of the customer base equitably? Utility representatives instinctively would answer yes. Those employees believe in fairness. But do they really understand? How do they know? Using GIS and mapping to create a solid science-based understanding is one way. Geography and analytics uncover the answer to the equity question. Esri has mapped demographics for many years. Demographic data are measures of population equity. It maps areas such as poverty, older people, people of color, people with disabilities, income and education levels, single parenthood, and more. These factors together form a tapestry that provides a solid understanding of a utility’s customer base.
Utilities keep rigorous statistics about outages and restoration processes. GIS can answer the equity question by overlaying outage frequency and duration with equity mapping. This process exposes any restoration gaps between areas of high and low equity. If the result shows a gap, then as Jack Dangermond, the founder and owner of Esri, always says, “understanding precedes action,” the utility can act to alter its restoration practices to address the gap. The same analytics applies to infrastructure investments. Is the utility upgrading its equipment based on engineering principles alone, or is it factoring in equity in its investment decisions?
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GIS Is Not Just About Making Maps
When I speak to an audience about the value of GIS, I often start with this question. “What’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear the term GIS?” The audience yells out its belief, “Maps.” That is because they believe that GIS has been primarily used to reference the location of poles and wires. GIS has been an invaluable tool for keeping track of where everything is. However, limiting GIS as a reference tool does not do it justice. While maps are central to GIS, I would like to suggest that the answer to my question, might well be “discovery.” GIS helps utilities discover things they didn’t know before. For example, even though we believed we were providing equitable service to our customer base, GIS can help us understand the real situation.
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GIS Busts Beliefs
Many utility employees have the belief that customers think highly of their utility. How do they know for sure? Customer satisfaction is not uniform. It depends. It may vary widely by location, depending on the customers’ experience with the utility. Satisfaction ratings are averages. If the average customer satisfaction score is 3.75 out of 5 and the utility wants to raise that average, they need to know more. The utility must understand where clusters of customers have had good and bad experiences. Surveying and mapping customers’ opinions overlayed on demographics gains a solid understanding. Did the utility trim trees in a neighborhood that highly valued their trees? Where were their clusters of complaints about construction issues? Where did customers wait a long time to get their solar system approved? Were their areas of persistent outages? Mapping locations of high bill complaints, outages, restoration, wait time to answer phones, time to connect, and meeting schedules provides deep understanding. Then, once utilities understand where and what the problems are, they can target those customers who are unhappy, know why, and act accordingly.
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Understanding Is Central to Operational Excellence
Powerco, the largest electric company in New Zealand, had a problem. Its networks were of an age where their condition and performance were deteriorating. They needed renewal. However, identifying and prioritizing overhead line assets for replacement is not straightforward. Many might believe that renewal is based on age. So, one might start by replacing the oldest equipment first. However, Powerco wanted to gain a solid understanding of its assets. It wanted to include many other factors such as material quality, environment, past maintenance practices, visual assessments of condition, and fault history.
Powerco implemented a GIS spatial analysis to get a science-based approach to asset replacement. It broke down the service territory into small hexagon-shapes. Each small area included a score characterizing the potential impact of asset failure. It combined information from diverse sources to visualize what had been previously unseen—the number of customers potentially affected by equipment failure. Read the complete story here.
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Believing and Understanding
While GIS has been extremely useful for many utility tasks, its use as a decision-support tool can be transformational. Given the challenges utilities face with decarbonization, an aging workforce, and network assets, utilities need all the help they can get. One way is to move from believing to understanding by uncovering new insights with GIS. Download the free eBook on how GIS can digitally transform electric utilities, leveraging its new network model, engagement abilities, and underutilized yet powerful insight capabilities.
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