Can Smart Tech Boost Grid Efficiency and Savings for Utilities?
The utility industry is an unsung hero for nearly every community – until the power falters. For example, my home state of Texas recently faced extreme weather, causing downed power lines. This has left millions across Texas without power—for days or weeks.
These events perfectly exemplify the dangerous combination of aging systems and the increased demand for today’s utilities. This is further complicated by integrating renewable energy, labor shortages, a lack of real-time visibility, and high customer expectations.
Rising Reliance on Smart Grids
One way to support rising demand is through an efficient transition to smart grid technology.
The term “smart grid” was defined in the early 2000s and passed into law, driving significant progress to implement the technology components needed to run a smart grid system. Yet, much work remains.
The utility industry relies heavily on contract labor to advance the smart grid transition process. This adds extra layers of complexity for the industry's leadership to ensure contract requirements, efficiency, and the overall success of grid transmission and distribution.
The global smart grid marketis forecast to surpass $130 billion by 2028 to support sustainable market growth. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission estimates that electricity demands will increase by nearly 5% over the next five years.
So, the right technology must be in place to automate back-end processes and contract compliance.
Simplify Timekeeping, Invoicing, and Budget Approval
Many of the roles associated with smart grid growth and development require stringent specialization and certification. Any risk of contracting a workforce that doesn’t meet these requirements can result in significant errors and slowdowns or, in the absolute worst case, the endangerment of the project and crews.
Plus, when a utility provider spends a significant portion of its annual budget on contract labor, it should be proactive in ensuring all contractors are qualified for their roles. The right system can simplify the timekeeping, invoicing, and budget approval processes.
For example, my company, MCi, helped a large electric utility providerin New Mexico that served over 500,000 customers in its home state and wholesale customers throughout the Southwest. The company had more than 1,800 employees and spent $100 million annually on its contractor workforce.
After implementing our solution, TRACK, the company gained control of contract compliance and unlocked real-time visibility into contractor activities, ultimately driving greater accuracy, efficiency, safety, and cost savings.
Prevent Contractor Overbilling
In any scenario, contract development can be a tedious, lengthy process that requires all parties to know the details to reach an agreement that benefits both parties. However, in the case of the owner-contractor relationship, these contracts can be even more difficult to manage and enforce.
Typically, field managers seldom, if ever, see the contract terms and conditions for the vendors they are responsible for managing. Both teams are operating somewhat blindly regarding the contract.
When this is the case, which it often is, teams work inefficiently. Contractors may overbill. People operating machinery who aren’t certified to do so may put themselves, other contractors, and the project at risk.
However, the right software, such as myTrack (the next-generation TRACK Platform) can mitigate this slew of side effects. Implementing a contractor data and spend management software platform that automates many of these back-office processes will streamline the overall project performance and ultimately drive cost savings for the utility owner.
Use Proof of Presence to Ensure Safety & Savings
In addition to lacking contract compliance, many of today’s utility companies don’t have real-time visibility to know who is on the job site. This limits utility provider’s ability to strategically oversee and monitor projects and make real-time decisions to improve accuracy and efficiency.
For example, the New Mexico electric utility provider mentioned earlier had manually managed contractor timekeeping and invoicing before TRACK. Hundreds or sometimes thousands of contractors would be on a site at any given time, working under a wide variety of contracts. On-site management typically didn’t know the contract details, so the staff took the information provided by the contractors and entered their invoices manually.
By implementing TRACK, our platform matched workflow design and integrated seamlessly to begin processing its contractor data and automating approvals, workforce tracking and contract compliance, ensuring accuracy across all areas.
An extension of our TRACK platform, Track Anywhere, a mobile application, records worker activity and provides convenient badge-in/badge-out functionality for individuals identified by their personal RFID tag, QR code, or unique access code. The technology also records the geo-location of each activity, ensuring worker proof of presence and safety.
By automating these processes and gaining real-time visibility into the project sites, the utility provider’s projects became more efficient, and the provider cut ties to manual systems for contractor spend management. The result was an $8 million cost savings for the utility, nearly 10% of its annual contractor spend.
Put the Right Technology in Place
As the utility industry continues to mature and strengthen its smart grid development and deployment across the U.S. and internationally, it’s critical to have the right tech in place to make this happen efficiently, responsibly, and at a sustainable pace.
With contractor data and spend management software, inefficiencies and lack of visibility can be eliminated to unlock cost and time savings. All of these can be directly reinvested in the further development of smart grids and aid utility transmission and distribution.
Software like myTrack can simplify the management of contract labor and optimize the workforce. The platform empowers companies with a far more efficient way to track the costs of labor, equipment, and materials.
Ready to learn more about how myTrack can help? Schedule a meeting to learn more now.