Demystifying the Digital Future for Utilities with Joe Travis of Bentley in Preparation of DISTRIBUTECH - [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Expert Interview]
In utility board rooms across the country, you’re bound to hear the word ‘digital’ thrown around in nearly every conversation. While this embrace of modern and intelligent solutions is a welcome one in the energy industry, the true leaders in this space are careful not to treat digitalization as a buzzword but rather a feature to be imprinted into their DNA. But leaders may have the best intentions without knowing how exactly to make that happen: that’s where digital utility thought leaders like Joe Travis and his team at Bentley Systems come in.
Joe is the Vice President, Energy, at Bentley Systems where he is always looking ahead to the future needs of the power sector to create and implement the optimal software solutions. If anyone knows what it is to cut through the hype and get to the heart of where these digital tools can enhance utility operations, customer experiences, and a healthy grid it’s him. Bentley is appropriate labeled as a Trendsetter at the upcoming Distributech Conference in San Diego from February 7 to 9, and so their exhibit will undoubtedly be one of the key ones for attendees to visit. To give a preview as to what Distributech attendees can hope to learn at the Bentley booth, Joe agreed to sit for an interview with the Energy Central team to truly get to the heart of: what does true digital for utilities look like and why should we care?
Matt Chester: With all the complex and innovative tools that get fit under the label of digital for utilities these days, it brings up a natural pushback: aren’t utilities already digital? So can you clear up for us what you mean about utilities going digital and how that’s different from the status quo?
Joe Travis: When you compare the utility industry to some of the other major industries that have gone digital like healthcare or automotive, the truth is that utilities have been a little slow to make this major transformation. What we're really talking about is making sure that we have a reliable grid that is resilient to all kinds of different factors. At the end of the day, it's all about the end user. Customers expect to be able to flip the light switch and have reliable power and utilities need to embrace the digital tools to make that happen.
There are so many moving pieces and parts that are often independent of each other. Different CAD systems, GIS systems, SCADA systems, outage management, and more, and they create a variety of places where data is being generated and captured. The transformation that we're starting to see now is that these departments are becoming much more dependent upon each other for reliable and clean data. So by having some tighter integration and interoperability, you're able to increase efficiencies and reduce redundancies, errors, and wasted time. If everyone is in their own department creating their own silos of data, you may be duplicating the work or introducing errors along the way. So, what we start to see now is that when utilities truly go digital, we start to see interoperability of systems, different data sets being shared and the process is becoming much more efficient and the output is improving with a true single source of data in the end of the day.