Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) sought insights into system line losses beyond basic purchase and sale of kilowatt hours. In an effort to understand the losses and gain the ability to accurately identify losses at a granular level, the analytics team embarked on a line loss analytics program. It was comprised of two key efforts: engineering analysis and data science analysis. During the engineering analysis, distribution engineers and data scientists worked together to create or modify distribution models and processed data to extract necessary equipment ratings and electrical characteristics which were used in a data-driven evaluation of technical losses from each of the models simulated. The purpose of the data science piece was to provide further insight into the system level losses from assets external to electrical impedance and saturation losses. For this step, the investigated the relationships between SCADA, AMI, MDM, unmetered loads, and possible energy theft through bulk data analytics and algorithms. The outcome of this project provided REC more actionable insights into the different functions of load and losses indicative of their system. Join this presentation to learn about the analytic journey that produced dashboards for REC, leading to an accurate and in-depth understanding of its system losses and significant reduction in wholesale costs to its members.

Session Chair:

Matt Besch
Director Utilities Marketing
Ubicquia