BC Hydro is one of the largest energy suppliers in Canada. They generate and deliver electricity to 95% of the population of B.C. and serve over four million people. Their mission is to provide reliable, affordable, clean electricity throughout B.C., safely. BC Hydro’s vision is to be the most trusted, innovative utility company in North America by being smart about power in all they do.
THE CHALLENGE
In 2011, BC Hydro began an ambitious smart grid project that included replacing old electromechanical meters with nearly two million state-of-the-art smart meters. As BC Hydro began its smart meter roll-out, the leadership quickly recognized that without the right technology, it would face significant challenges integrating and analyzing such a large volume of data from so many different sources.
THE SOLUTION
BC Hydro partnered with OSI Consulting & Bit Stew Systems (Now part of GE) to help design a data architecture that quickly and easily integrated data from nearly 2 million smart meters, more than 5,000 relays, 2,000 routers and 30 different operational and IT systems including homegrown and legacy systems. By implementing Bit Stew’s IIoT platform, BC Hydro was able to integrate AMI data from the smart grid along with data from grid-asset health tracking systems, distribution grid management systems, field dispatch systems, work management systems, customer information systems, AMI and GIS systems, meter data management systems and more.
THE RESULT
As BC Hydro began its smart meter roll-out, the leadership quickly recognized that without the right technology partner, the utility would face significant challenges integrating and analyzing large volumes of data from so many different sources and legacy systems.
- Efficiently triaged hundreds of millions of data elements every day
- Enabled real-time displays of meter outages and geo-spatial views of grid assets
- Better managed meter-to-grid performance such as voltage issues, system restoration and more
- Identified and reconciled any data discrepancies across separate systems to ensure data accuracy in all systems
