When trying to protect the environment, aside from all the political issues, there are tremendous amounts of challenges to overcome — and big data is one of them. From weather to human impact, there are tons of factors, both natural and man-made, that must be considered to improve a company’s energy usage.
A company like C3 builds energy efficiency systems for organizations such as Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison, Commonwealth Edison, Iberdrola, Entergy, and others. These systems allow these companies to use the aggregation of big data analytics to establish more intimate relationships with their customers to serve them better. It’s their job to help companies improve their energy intake and also ensure the planet stays “green.”
Healthy Cycles
C3 wanted to build a Statistical Analytics System (SAS) application platform that would allow them to aggregate all the sources of information about energy utilization within an enterprise, and then allow them to characterize the energy dynamics of these organizations in real time. C3 also wanted analytics technology to find ways to make their energy footprint smaller and then manage the completion of those projects through their life cycle. C3 is working with organizations that have consumed as much as $4 billion of energy a year with the objective of reducing their energy footprint by as much as 25%.
Over the years, systems have changed at C3 — the information they were trying to aggregate and analyze was primarily from within the enterprise before. However, now 60% to 70% of this information today is outside the enterprise firewall. The real-time systems that are being used now include weather, behavioral, usage, and meter data management systems. All of these and more need to be aggregated both internally and externally to make sense of the problems at the company and to add value to customer experience.
Lowering Risks
C3 has spent some time on an analytics platform, and when they got down to the problem of data aggregation, C3 turned to TIBCO to aggregate the information from all of these disparate data sources. The deployment went live, easily on schedule. What is most important is customers are very happy and it’s not common that systems of this scale actually get done at all, much less on schedule and on budget to admit exacting and very rigorous performance objectives.
Event software allows energy usage data to be automatically correlated and analyzed on an ongoing basis that searches for risks and opportunities. Being able to detect if there’s a problem and then being able to correct it is how companies are going to have responsible energy use. Lowering the risks a company has lowers the risks that we will continue to overuse our planet’s resources.
