FortisBC Concludes its Inaugural Project Greenlight Innovation Pilot with PwC Canada and Vancouver-based Awesense

FortisBC, one of British Columbia’s largest energy providers and a founding member of Project Greenlight, recently completed its inaugural innovation pilot with PwC Canada, a leading professional services firm, and Awesense, a Vancouver-based energy software company. The conducted pilot involved the development and investigation into the efficacy of data-driven techniques to improve the quality of the FortisBC electrical network connectivity model.

Improving Meter Association and Phase Identification Labels in Source Data

Leveraging FortisBC’s Geospatial Information System (GIS), Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) data, a multidisciplinary team of power systems engineers, data scientists and solution architects built and studied computational models that looked to improve customer phase and meter-to-transformer associations for a subset of the FortisBC grid. The models were built against the Awesense Energy Data Model (EDM) on its innovative Energy Transition Platform, allowing the team to achieve data insights 12X faster than traditional data analysis methods. Throughout the development lifecycle of the pilot, the outputs of the algorithms were regularly field assessed and validated to not only measure their efficacy and predictive power, but also to envision how best this type of innovative technology could integrate with traditional business processes at the electrical utility. Moreover, the insights generated through this collaborative effort also allowed the team to better understand specific challenges and even overcome several limitations that arose with using field data to address evolving and real-world business needs across the enterprise.

The outcomes of the pilot are currently being assessed at FortisBC towards future integration and broader deployment so as to enable additional internal initiatives, use cases and downstream benefits that can be unlocked through implementing such improved grid connectivity modeling approaches.

“FortisBC is focused on improving how we leverage data to improve utility operations. The pilot with PwC and Awesense provided a valuable opportunity to learn more about the application of advanced data analytics to help improve the accuracy of our electrical network connectivity model. These efforts are becoming increasingly important to help support increased electric loads associated with the energy transition. FortisBC appreciates the contributions from the teams at PwC and Awesense in helping to advance these efforts.”

Michael Leyland, Manager of Innovative Initiatives at FortisBC

“Ongoing energy transition and green energy efforts will require new and innovative approaches to solving unique challenges in the energy and utilities sector. PwC is proud and thankful to have worked with FortisBC and Awesense in examining improvement opportunities for grid connectivity models that are enabled through the use of data, technology & advanced analytics.”

Maciej Hryniewicki, PhD, Director of Advanced Analytics & AI at PwC Canada

“Project Greenlight is a great initiative to bring companies together, working towards adapting efficiently to an evolving grid. We are pleased to contribute to this project with our Energy Data Model that enables data insights to be delivered rapidly compared with industry standards. Our contribution to PwC’s analytics allows FortisBC to understand its distribution system more accurately and assist in further system planning and load growth studies.”

Mischa Steiner, Founder and CEO of Awesense