Copel expands its smart electrical grid with Oracle Meter Data Management
Brazilian electricity company implements Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management to manage smart meter data for 1.6 million consumers.
“With Oracle Meter Data Management, we have access to interesting features to expand our smart grid project. The solution brought automation in vital processes and also allowed us to help the environment, because we reduced carbon emissions into the atmosphere due to fewer field teams moving through the cities where the project is already underway.”
Business challenges
Copel (Companhia Paranaense de Energia) started in 1954 as a pioneer in the electrification of the Brazilian state of Paraná. Today, the company operates in 10 Brazilian states, with wind farms, hydroelectric plants, transmission lines, and distribution networks.
In 2020, Copel launched a smart grid program to modernize electricity distribution. By the end of 2024, the company’s goal is to install 1.6 million smart meters by the end of 2024. During the first phase of the program, the company used proprietary software to manage smart meters. However, as the project developed, the company needed more robust software that offered scalability and a wider range of features to support plans to serve more than 5 million users in coming years.
Why Copel chose Oracle
After an extensive bidding process, Copel selected Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management for its scalability. Oracle also offered the strongest cost-benefit ratio and shortest implementation time.
In addition, Meter Data Management would integrate with other company systems and extract the maximum value from the data collected in smart meters. For example, Copel could check whether meters were on or off or notice any usage irregularities, among other features.
Results
After adopting Meter Data Management, Copel no longer sent employees to customers’ homes to read meters or reconnect electricity. The company saw significant savings because those activities are accomplished remotely in a matter of minutes. Remote maintenance also helped Copel prevent 95 tons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere from January to August 2023.
Meter Data Management helped identify irregular points of energy consumption, while increasing the utility’s accuracy in detecting them, which reduced fraud. Copel optimized smart meter data, including confirming that meters are functioning correctly, creating power outage alarms, and anticipating drops in the electrical network. When this happens, the utility quickly dispatches a field team to investigate.
The tool also gave customers the ability to use a phone app to monitor their energy consumption, alert the company about power outages, request repairs, and more.
Partners
For the implementation, Copel relied on V2COM, which specializes in IoT products and applications. V2COM assisted during three expansion stages. The first two phases were completed on time, and the final one is scheduled for 2024.
About the customer
Copel (Companhia Paranaense de Energia) is a Brazilian utility that generates, transmits, distributes, and trades electricity. The largest company in the Brazilian state of Paraná, it also operates in 10 other Brazilian states.