The ever-growing focus on renewable energies, smart cities and rising compliance mandates has accelerated the adoption of digital transformation for brands in the energy and utility sector. Digitalization can streamline the energy value chain encompassing all the activities right from energy generation to distribution, power supply to consumption etc, providing real-time insights for driving key business goals.

As per Gartner’s 2021 CIO Survey, 71% of oil and gas business leaders are asking their CIOs for more strategic insight and action.

Data Analytics and BI capabilities are disrupting the energy and utilities sector, allowing them to tap into their archival data to design scalable solutions for streamlining operational strategies and delivering enhanced customer experience.

In this blog, we will discuss the top ways how data analytics and BI is transforming the Energy and Utilities sector.

1. Power outage prediction and detection

Power outage is a prominent problem plaguing the energy and utilities sector. Despite multiple efforts, blackouts happen- due to faults or failures of the electric grids. Leading brands in the energy and utilities sector are leveraging data analytics and BI-based agile solutions for analysing live data and designing smart algorithms to predict the effect of weather conditions on the power grid, detecting areas of possible power outages, filtering outage type and inputs real-time etc.

Data analytics is helping businesses across industries improve their decision-making power, take realtime decisions, predict outcomes and act early. Espire has a Data, Analytics and AI/ML COE which helps customers across sectors to mitigate such operational bottlenecks.

This success story highlights how Espire designed a scalable analytics & BI platform for a leading UK-based Insurance Company to provide easy self-service Data BI and reporting, our agile solution lowered the cost of operations and improved the time to market. Read more> here

2. Equipment maintenance and efficiency

Preventive equipment maintenance involves pro-active monitoring of the equipment performance and condition to predict any instances of failure in the future. Leading energy and utilities companies leverage smart data solutions, trackers or sensors to analyze data and predict equipment failures. With real-time data on equipment maintenance and performance, energy and utility companies can enhance the equipment efficiency and life.

3. Effective Load Management

Smart grids and dynamic energy management systems deploy smart devices and distributed energy resources for enhanced demand management and maximized energy savings. Data and analytics forms the backbone of Smart Grids and dynamic energy management systems as they help energy and utility companies compartmentalize large quantities of data for efficient demand forecasting, optimizing energy distribution and driving energy efficiency.

4. Improving customer service & experience

According to Mckinsey and company, designing great customer experiences is getting easier with the rise of predictive analytics.

Customer service and engagement form the bed rock of any business, brands in the energy and utilities sector are focused at driving impeccable digital customer experiences. By effective customer journey mapping across touchpoints like websites and applications, customer dashboards and marketing interactions, customer support or social media interactions, brands are trying to collect and analyze specific customer data to build a personalized digital experience for customers.

"Utilitech" companies or "Digital only" have great advantage with right focus across right channels, but Legacy-based providers can equally drive the behaviour by migrating or focussing on a bimodal approach.

Data and predictive analytics are emerging as a must-have technology for organisations in the energy and utilities sector. But the key question is where to start, how to measure ROI, and drive this as ongoing value program rather than a large CAPEX upfront investment.

To know how Espire is helping leading Energy and Utilities brands accelerate their digital transformation initiatives and Data/Analytics programs , visit> https://www. espire.com/industries/energy-and-utilities or get in touch at marketing@espire.com