Be sure to sign into your Energy Central account (register for free here) to access this full post with the podcast recording.
In the final episode of the ESRI-presented podcast series about capturing GIS information more effectively, the esteemed Pat Hohl and Bill Meehan move past the typical association of GIS with maps and move into what they believe serves a larger purpose in the realm of discovery and understanding complex data, especially within the utility sector. Pat and Bill discuss transitioning from paper to digital maps in this conversation and how utilities move towards fully connected, intelligent models for better interoperability and load flow management.
The role of mobile tools and web services will serve to reduce data latency and increase transparency, with an emphasis on safety and operational efficiency. Specifically, Digital Twins combine multiple data sources like imagery, real-time sensor data, and logical representations for more informed decision-making, and this episode serves as a starting point for understanding how GIS acts as a foundation for these technologies. Want to dive in more deeply with ESRI’s expertise? Start that process here.
Prefer to Read vs. Listening? Scroll Down to Read Transcript.
Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: ESRI
In case you missed it, the full series can be found at these links:
Key Links:
GIS for Electric Utilities from ESRI
Pat Hohl’s Energy Central Profile
Bill Meehan’s Energy Central Profile
TRANSCRIPT
Matt Chester:
Hello, and welcome to the last episode of the three-part special Power Perspectives episode series presented by Esri. While the normal episodes in this stream focus on our host Jason Price chatting with utility guests, Bill Meehan and Pat Hohl, both directors with Esri, took over our podcast series to chat amongst themselves about the who, what, where, when, and why of GIS as it relates to utilities. In this final episode of the series, Bill and Pat conclude by discussing how GIS information can be captured more effectively, especially moving beyond the notion of just maps, but into the larger and more complex data that can make up the utility sector. If you've missed episodes one or two of this series, head to the show notes now wherever you're listening for links to those episodes so you can get up to speed quick. Thanks again to Esri for driving this series and we hope our listeners enjoy and learn.
Pat Hohl:
Hi, Bill, welcome to the podcast. This is the third in our three-part series series about how to capture information more effectively. Bill, I've heard you address many crowds and when you start, you frequently ask the audience a question and that question is, "What is the first thing you think of when you hear GIS?" What do people normally say?
Bill Meehan:
The majority of people will say maps, and actually that's not a bad answer. Because I mean, really it is about maps. I mean, GIS is all about really being able to see things on a map, that's so important. That goes back centuries really, everybody used maps for years and years and years. But I also like to think of the word discovery because it's really about discovering things about the world that you may not be able to see in a simple map. We talked about that in our last podcast, this idea of understanding. But the thing is, in order to do that, you need data. You need really good data and I'd also like to think of GIS as having both content, which is really about the stuff, especially if you're talking about utilities and GIS, it's about wires and transformers and poles and all that kind of stuff.
But it's also about the context, and being able to get that data really, really good is critical. When I think about sometimes we have this notion as GIS is about kind of making a map and sometimes it takes a long time to get the data. If you're not using up-to-date information, making decisions can be really tricky. I do remember a case that I experienced myself when I was working for the power company. Somebody decided to go to ... for work, they went to a switch, a pad mounted switch, and they needed to cut a cable clear. I don't remember all the circumstances, but what I do remember is the person went to the wrong switch and the reason why they went to the wrong switch is because their data was ... it wasn't that it was wrong, it was just out of date. They hadn't had time to put in the good information.
They went to the wrong cable, they were supposed to test, they didn't test, they were supposed to put on their protective gear, they didn't put in a protective gear and they cut into a live cable. Fortunately, the person didn't die, they got a little burned. Having good information and making information available to other people is just so, so important. I think part of the problem with GIS over the years has been people have thought about GIS as a way to automate the mapping process. In other words, people had paper maps for years and years and years, and the idea would be it takes too long to make these hand drawn maps. Let's use the computer to make the maps. But at the end of the day, the maps were ... they looked exactly like the old maps. They were just automated versions of the old maps. They didn't really tell the whole story.
One of the ideas, and I'd like you to talk about this, Pat, is that it was kind of like, "Well, let's create a picture of what's happening in a map", but not really using the data for analytics. Pat, maybe you can talk about this notion of going from a picture to a model.
Pat Hohl:
Well, you're right, Bill. If we go into the way back machine, you and I both worked 25 years ago in that process of moving from paper to a better paper maps generated by a computer. The primary goal at that time was to make a nice looking piece of paper and to make it as quickly as possible. We didn't really pay that much attention to the logical connectivity of all those graphic primitives that were in the computer, and so now as we look at the current needs of the grid and the future grid, we need better understanding of the model. We need to be able to support ADMS and detailed engineering analysis. Just trying to figure out where would be the best place to put energy storage is no simple question. What I'm seeing in the industry is that utilities are moving from more simplistic models to create maps to fully connected, logical, intelligent models that are capable of interoperability with these other systems for system protection, for load flows.
When you were telling your story about safety, it reminded me, I responded to a similar accident many years ago, a misidentified switch where alignment grounded a hot 34 line because it was the wrong switch. You can't overlook the importance of having data which is accurate and complete and up to date. The time lag that we have seen in the industry, we did a survey a number of years ago where we asked utilities, "What is the time lag between when a change occurs in the field and when it actually shows up on the maps?" Those were all way too long and as you described, we see the need for people to reduce that latency and the information and a lot of people are using mobile tools to help speed up that process. Would you agree?
Bill Meehan:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the key to this latency problem is mobility and even companies that have really good GISs, that have been using GISs for all kinds of things, even for analytics and everything else, sometimes they don't think that, "Well, if I could get the data quicker, it would be better." Using the new technology that we have, things we use every day, cell phones and a pad. What really happens is when you make a change, when something happens in the field and you make a change right now, it shows up for everybody so that when even the person comes in on the next shift, they're seeing what can happen. You don't have to make these permanent real fancy changes, but as long as you let people know. I think about mobility in many of the ways is social media. There's this immediacy aspect to it that things can happen right away.
I mean, it can be a matter of life and death. I mean, we talked about that with safety issues. People can get hurt if you don't have good information. The thing is, I find that when things are sort of out of date and you're in the field and you look up at a pole and you see on the map it shows a transformer, but there's no transformer there, it creates confusion and whenever you have confusion, then you're really running into issues. We did a story in the country of Oman, it's called MEDC, they were able to put together a really nice mobile implementation and it really saved them a lot of time and the latency just changed dramatically. What about you? You've had some experience with people using mobility as well, Pat.
Pat Hohl:
Well, there's a lot of use cases and in this podcast we're breaking up sharing information, gaining new insights and capturing that information. But really this mobile piece, although it's involved in sharing, it's really important to think about this in the capabilities that it can deliver to the information. We talked about reducing the latency, but many people are using that around the world to improve the way that that information is gathered and maintained. Just in the last year, we've had discussions with various customers about capturing safety related information for job sites, for sharing joint use information with telecommunications companies, performing inspections.
That's a biggie. The utilities are always doing inspections of equipment. Line clearance, gathering not only pre trim data, but even post trim data. Contracted work or mutual aid, these are all opportunities that affect data and there's a great opportunity to use mobile tools to capture that data more effectively, eliminate the number of times that it gets handed off because every time you have to write it on a piece of paper and put it in an inbox and somebody else has to key punch it, there's opportunities for errors to creep in. This generally increases the transparency for everybody, which is what you're talking about with the social media aspect. I love that.
Bill Meehan:
One of the technologies that I think has been transformational is this notion of web services and, again, it's what social media's been using for years, web services so that when something happens over here ... I think of my little granddaughter's doing a dance and I'm somewhere in another part of the world, I mean, I get to see that right away. I don't have to wait. But now with the web services, you can do things immediately. What's new today also is this new technology that we put in place called the ArcGIS Utility Network. It creates a model as you talked about, a model of the electric system, the connectivity, but it also utilizes web services so that the utility network isn't just confined to the office, it can be published, it can be immediately accessible through a mobile device. You can see the same kind of connectivity we have in the office on a mobile device and that really can be critical.
I know a company in Australia, Energy Queensland, they've now adopted the whole utility network and using this notion of web services and being able to collaborate on this data, really creating an immediacy. You must have some examples as well, Pat.
Pat Hohl:
Well, Bill, when we're recording this, you and I just came from our user conference in San Diego in July, and I moderated sessions with numerous utilities, large utilities like First Energy and PG&E was there. We've done stories on Dista, Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities, Dubai, ESO in the Baltics. There's about 500 companies around the world that are implementing the technology that you described. It does include this services based notion and a more detailed model, but maybe the part that I like, one be the best features, is the build in analytics and the ability to trace out the network and analyze that network as you go to feed the various processes for analytical purposes within the utility. When I think about where things are headed, I see in terms of capturing data, there is a lot of new information, a lot of new data types that are coming down the pike.
Utilities still have a lot of information in CAD files, and the integration between CAD and GIS is almost magical now to be able to bring those two data types together. A lot of people are talking about imagery and how to use that and artificial intelligence to gather information and meaningful insights about how to run their operations. LIDAR, 3D, are you hearing people talk about these things?
Bill Meehan:
Well, absolutely, and I also hear this term called digital twin, and I bet if we did a survey and we might do it on a webinar sometime about do people really understand it, and I think what you just described was what's really digital twins, creating models not just of ... we think of digital twin maybe as kind of a physical model, like a 3D model of a transmission tower or of a transformer or something like that, but it's more than that. It's taking information from imagery, from even real-time information. We have this thing in the utility business called SCADA, and that's realtime information or sometimes referred to it as IOT information of sensor information, bringing that data in.
A digital twin can be a physical representation, but can be a logical representation too, and that's really where this interoperability comes in really, really importantly, being able to get as much information together to create a digital twin, which could even be kind of a augmented reality in effect, all of the things that help us to make ... what ultimately really want to do is to make decisions quickly and effectively so that we can be safe and effective in terms of meeting customer needs and doing what's right for the customer. I think this notion of digital twin and the utility network really go hand in hand with one another.
Pat Hohl:
They do. All of these things are examples of digital twins. You can't go to Best Buy and check out to buy one digital twin because digital twin is really a umbrella term that encapsulates a lot of these things that we're doing to represent the real world. Sometimes that's physical objects, sometimes that is process or the relationships between those things, or even real-time behavior to look at some historical state in the past, but often to monitor real-time performance and see that in a way that's functional for people and transparent. Then I guess the next stage would be to be able to predict and examine what a future state would look like. GIS is really a foundation for all these technologies because they're so disparate. How do you bring them together? You bring them together around the one thing that they have in common, which is where they are and how they interrelate with each other.
Well, I see that we're about out of time. This really wraps up the three part series on capturing and sharing and understanding vital utility information needed for the future grid.
Bill Meehan:
That's right, Pat, and I'd also like to give a big shout-out, a thanks to Energy Central for their help in putting this podcast together as well as Energy Central that does a great job of promoting all of these kind of technologies. Also, if you're interested in GIS and how GIS can transition your company from sort of a paper-based system to a model system, check out our blogs. Pat and I do blogs what? Pat, I don't know, every couple of weeks we'll write a blog about one of these subjects that we talked about today. Check it out, check out Energy Central, and we'll see you at a conference soon.
Pat Hohl:
Thank you.
About Energy Central Podcasts
The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.
The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.
The Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.
If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them. For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility. We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors.
Happy listening and stay tuned for our next episode! Like what you hear, have a suggestion for future episodes, or a question for our guest? Leave a note in the comments below.
All new episodes of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast will be posted to the relevant Energy Central community group, but you can also subscribe to the podcast at all the major podcast outlets, including:
- Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/energy-central-unnamed-podcast-series/id1488804391
- Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5jiUn8vzSq1t99WtECLn1j
- Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOFTK18LIdud8gULyJPpWh-GXO45OXviN
- Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on Amazon Podcasts: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e573c7f0-cbe6-49af-9b46-16fbcb8dbaa7/energy-central-power-perspectives%E2%84%A2-podcast?-podcast
- Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on TuneIn: https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Energy-Central-Podcast-p1274390/
- Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/energycentral