Smartphones are glued to everyone's hands—and utilities are using that to their advantage.
Despite barriers to adoption, leading technology companies such as ABB/Ventyx and Cisco are creating smartphone software platforms for utilities. From streamlining data conversion to detecting outages, smartphones are becoming an effective tool for electric utilities. Here are three smartphone capabilities every utility should know about—and take advantage of.
FIELD INSPECTION
Schneider Electric has been testing Orbit, a new software platform, with several unnamed utilities, Greentech Media reports. Launched on July 1, the platform seamlessly integrates field inspection data and assets with smartphones and mobile devices tailored specifically to utilities' use. The platform enables utilities to unify collection and transfer of data from geographic information systems (GIS), workforce and asset management systems and convert it to real-time information, which is critical for field inspection.
At one utility, the use of the Orbit platform led to significant time and cost reduction for planned inspections and maintenance. “With Orbit, we’re able to remove many, many links to that chain,” Jason Brewington, director of product management for Schneider’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing solutions, told Greentech Media.
While Orbit is far from being the only product of its kind on the market, it stands apart by making use of Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform, which is highly regarded among cloud technology platforms.
ASSET MANAGEMENT
AMT-SYBEX's Affinity Fieldreach mobile solution software enables utility engineers to use their iPhones to take pictures of repairs to underground cables, thereby documenting the work to assure compliance with state regulations. “Each photograph is date and time stamped, at the right place and time, and synchronized in real-time with the company's central asset management system,” the software company says.
London’s Electricity North West (ENW) utility has agreed to deploy the platform, giving 650 of its engineers new iPhones to capture essential information. “The iPhone can handle almost any task that an engineer needs to perform in the field,” AMT-SYBEX’s group technical director Leonard Hayes explains. ENW plans to use the Fieldreach software to track vegetation close to its 13,000 kilometers of power lines.
WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT
TOA Technologies has launched a workforce management tool that can save utilities $10,000 per service truck a year, the company claims. Running on a smartphone, the ETAdirect platform measures the time it takes for an employee to finish a task and travel from spot to spot, rendering a performance profile. Based on a series of profiles, ETAdirect steadily improves job-length and travel time predictions. ETAdirect allows a dispatch center and field staff to swap data in real-time and send customers up-to-the-minute updates.
ETAdirect can improve daily job completion rates by 47%, reduce unnecessary trips by 20% and reduce distance traveled by 40%. The results are impressive, with ETAdirect even earning its return on investment (ROI) in just five days, according to TOA Technologies.
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