SMECO boosts energy efficiency and reliability with Oracle Utilities
The Maryland electric co-op uses Oracle Utilities Opower and Analytics Insights to reduce outages and hit state energy efficiency targets.
“Having one tool to visualize transformer and meter data together has changed the way we approach utility operations. ‘Run to failure’ is no longer the norm.”
Business challenges
Sustainability has long been a priority for the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO). So, when Maryland passed the EmPOWER Maryland Energy Efficiency Act to reduce the state's carbon footprint, SMECO went right to work. SMECO began rolling out advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), including smart meters, across its more than 170,000 accounts.
Those smart meters provided detailed data that could help SMECO pinpoint homes using above-average amounts of electricity for specific appliances. SMECO wanted to take advantage of this data to help customers reduce their energy use and help Maryland achieve its sustainability goals.
SMECO also wanted to use the AMI data to better identify and fix maintenance problems before outages occurred. However, their current meter data and outage management system wasn’t capable of using data in this way.
SMECO chose Oracle Utilities technology to help harness smart meter data, then use it to encourage customers to reduce energy use.
Why SMECO chose Oracle
SMECO was already using Oracle Utilities Opower Energy Efficiency to influence members to save energy. So when the utility decided to incorporate smart meter data into the initiative, it was an easy decision to tap into the solution’s disaggregation capabilities, which help break down a home's overall electrical usage to identify how much power individual appliances consume.
On the operations side, SMECO worked with the Oracle team to explore solutions. Utility leaders saw that other organizations used Oracle Utilities Analytics Insights to harness asset monitoring and network intelligence data—similar to the data that SMECO’s smart meters provided—to detect potential equipment failures, then fix them before they caused outages. SMECO determined that the solution could similarly help with AMI data to shift the maintenance model from reactive to preventative.
SMECO doubled the pace of smart thermostat adoption and saw a five-fold participation increase in its home energy improvement program.
Results
Two of the biggest factors in utility customer satisfaction are affordability and reliability. SMECO's decision to adopt Oracle Utilities technologies helped the electrical co-op improve both.
SMECO began using disaggregation technology in Opower to analyze smart meter data, identifying customers with appliances that used excessive energy. The utility targeted these customers with personalized offers and large rebates on new, energy efficient heat pumps, water heaters, and smart thermostats. Along with data about each appliance's energy use, the customized messages gave customers information about ways to conserve energy.
The program was a success: SMECO doubled the pace of smart thermostat adoption and saw a five-fold participation increase in its home energy improvement program. Opower made it easy to access the data that demonstrated these impressive results.
And on the operations side, SMECO used Analytics Insights to improve reliability while reducing unplanned outages and line losses. Within the first few months of operation, the solution identified more than 50 overloaded transformers, several of which would have caused unplanned outages. SMECO also used it to identify and remedy hundreds of geographic information system (GIS) data issues, resulting in more accurate outage grouping and better performance of its outage management system.
About the customer
Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) is one of the 15 largest electric cooperatives in the United States. As a nonprofit co-op, SMECO is co-owned by its customer-members, who elect the governing board.