07 Mar Living on the Edge!
By: Cade Burks, Chief Digital Officer, Big Data Energy
The days of a meter reader jumping the back fence every month are a distant memory for the 70 million smart meter accounts in the United States. One meter read a month for 10 million accounts equates to 120 million usage reads a year. Big Data Energy processes that many usage reads every day. The funny thing is, that is a very small amount of data compared to what is coming.
The evolution of the electric grid to connect more and more edge devices is accelerating at an exponential pace. At the wholesale level, I define the edge as wind farms, community solar, advanced demand response via automated commercial energy management, DER, and large scale utility storage to name a few impactful change agents. On the consumer level, I define the edge as rooftop solar, smart thermostats, smart home management, EV, and battery storage to name a few other impactful change agents. This is a very exciting time in the electricity industry and every week seems to bring a new impactful change agent.
The edge has many new devices, products, and services for all types of electricity consumers. Once thought of as “rate payers,” these consumers are evolving into electricity producers with storage capabilities. The storage can be filled at night and move via EV and sold at another location. Transactive Energy, Blockchain, and other technologies will evolve the edge at a quicker pace and in ways that are difficult to imagine.
When was the last time someone on an analytics project said; “The data is too accurate, too frequent, too well defined”? Circling back to the smart meter data growth, the edge evolution will bring exponential volumes, velocity, and variety as smaller usage periods are collated with weather, pricing, location, etc. All of this data will be treated as a digital asset. Digital asset management is a key practice to ensure the data can provide the return on investment promised to investors, boards, and C-level stakeholders.
Don’t fall off the edge! The meter readers are leaving the neighborhoods.
About Cade Burks
Cade Burks is Chief Digital Officer at Houston-based Big Data Energy Services, a leading digital asset management company specializing in retail energy providers, utilities and end-user customers. Prior to founding Big Data Energy in 2012, Burks was Executive Vice President for ista North America from 2008 to 2012. He founded EC Power and served as its Chairman and Chief Technology Officer from 1995 to 2008. Previously Chairman from 2015-2017, Burks currently serves as Vice-Chairman of the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), a non-profit standards development organization designed to work with industry to make the electric industry seamless for its customers and consumers. Burks also chairs the Critical Infrastructure committee addressing Cyber Security issues within the industry as well as the Retail Markets Quadrant, which supports retail electric and gas market transactions, Green Button, and OpenFMB standards.
Learn more about Cade on his LinkedIn page or by visiting www.bigdataenergyservices.com.
About Big Data Energy Services
Big Data Energy Services, Inc. (Big Data Energy) is a leading digital asset management company specializing in capturing data for retail energy providers, utilities and end-user customers. By using advanced, streamlined and dependable collection methods, we are able to provide clients with easy-to-interpret data formats and expert market insight to deliver bottom-line results. Led by Cade Burks, Jennifer Teel and seasoned executives in the industry, Big Data Energy executives are pioneers in the energy data collection space with decades of experience assisting retailers and utilities maximize their data to increase customer accounts and revenue.
Big Data Energy helps clients capture, transform and empower the data for good.
To learn more, visit: www.bigdataenergyservices.com.