Astrid Atkinson of Camus Energy to Share with DISTRIBUTECH Guests the Evolving Relationship Between Utilities & Customers - [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Expert Interview]
It’s no secret that the utility sector is amidst one of the grandest transformations ever undertaken. Gone are the days where customers would think about their power providers once or twice a month. The electrification of vehicles and buildings and the pervasiveness of distributed energy resources have upended the traditional utility-customer relationship, and forward-looking utilities are deploying new operations and planning tools in response to this paradigm shift.
At next month’s DISTRIBUTECH conference, Astrid Atkinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Camus Energy, will join utility leaders from PPL Electric, Vermont Electric Cooperative, and the former CEO of Australia’s market operator for ‘Consumers as Partners: The Evolving Utility Business Model.’ This can’t-miss panel discussion will focus on the changing role of utility customers and the resulting impact on utility business models, including the development of more DSO-like utilities.
The panel will be held on Tuesday, February 7 at the DISTRIBUTECH conference in San Diego; but to kickstart the conversations around this topic, Astrid sat down with Energy Central to give a preview of the topic, her insights, and why this panel should be added to all attendees’ agendas. If you have any thoughts or questions for Astrid ahead of DISTRIBUTECH, be sure to share them in the comments below to start the conversation before even showing up on the conference floor!
Matt Chester: Before we dive into the topics you’ll be sharing at DISTRIBUTECH, let’s introduce you to the Energy Central audience. Can you tell us a bit about Camus Energy, its role in the utility sector, and how you found yourself in this industry?
Astrid Atkinson: Personally, my background is in large-scale computing, reliability models, software, infrastructure, and operations. I was part of the team that helped Google develop their software reliability model for their global computing infrastructure, and I led a lot of software infrastructure development during their period of early scaling from about 2004 to 2012. Because of that, I have a lot of background in building and operating high reliability systems targeting utility grade and 99.995% or better reliability targets. When I began looking at what I wanted to do after Google, I focused on opportunities to apply Google’s software technology approaches to related fields. Another big factor was my (now 10-year-old) son. I wanted to work in an area that would help me foster a better future for him, which led me to explore applications in the climate and energy space.
Speaking to Camus Energy, we work with utilities, primarily distribution utilities, and we provide software that helps them integrate data about their grids and current operating conditions, everything from SCADA network conditions to GIS and interconnections to third-party data about customer resources. We pull that together to make it actionable in several ways. The biggest piece is understanding, planning for, and operating distributed energy resources within the local grid landscape. But that also includes analytics workflows like interconnection planning and forecasting. We then model workflows, such as evaluating load and generation forecasts, pulling all that data together to provide the data backbone for the next-generation grid.