Energy Smart Grid Catalyst: Best Practices for Utilities

by | May 23, 2011 | News, News2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 23, 2011 – Tysons Corner, Virginia

Synaptitude Consulting, a provider of transformational enterprise and technology solutions to business and government clients, announced that the company is working with TM Forum members in providing Operational and Information Technology solutions to Energy Utilities based on their existing telecom OSS, BSS, and operations models through the Energy Smart Grid Catalyst.

The Energy Smart Grid Catalyst will highlight how TM Forum members are leveraging the Telecom lessons-learned and solutions-developed to help Energy Utilities cope with the disruptive deployment of energy smart grid’s around the world.  Demonstrations and presentations will include:

  • Synaptitude – Utility Revenue Assurance Maturity Benchmark and Revenue Assurance KPI’s
  • Clarity – Utility OSS Suites
  • cVidya – Mapping ebIX utilities standards with TM Forum standards
  • HP – Utility MDMS and Monitoring Suite
  • Martin-Dawes – Utility Analytics
  • Progress Software – Utility Application Integration

Leveraging Telecom Best Practices for Utilities

The energy smart grid is a form of electricity network utilizing digital technology. A smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital communications to control appliances at consumers’ homes; this could save energy, reduce costs and increase reliability.   The increased data transmission capacity of the Telecom Next Generation Network has made it possible to apply sensing, measurement and control devices with two-way communications to electricity production, transmission, distribution and consumption parts of the power grid.

The comparison to the Next-Generation Network is particularly compelling as one considers the parallels between the Telecom Industry and the Utilities vertical as they grapple with new disruptive technology (source: NIST):

  Telecom NGN Energy Smart Grid
Real-world examples Verizon FIOS, ATT Uverse Duke, Oncor, PG&E, et. al.
First Deployments 2004 2008
Release 1 standards issued 2005 2009
Release 2 issues 2008 Ongoing
Number of standards docs Over 600 Hundreds, if not thousands
Nature of standards Mix and match of existing standards Mix and match of existing and new standards
Key Industry impacts Ability to deliver and manage increased capacity and services The Customer as the central focus Ability to deliver and manage increased capacity and services The Customer as the central focus

TM Forum members provide not only the communications networks necessary to enable the smart grid communications, but also the tools and processes required to manage those complex communications networks.   TM Forum service providers all over the globe have developed tailored communications offerings, especially mobile network offerings, for Energy utilities.  TM Forum vendors have also provided solutions to Energy Utilities based on their existing telecom OSS, BSS, and operations models.