Hawaiian Electric Extends Commitment to GDAC™: Substation Transformers

VIA and Hawaiian Electric are pleased to share that Hawaiian Electric has extended its commitment to the Global Data Asset Collaborative™ (GDAC™): Substation Transformers. By extending and expanding its commitment to GDAC™, Hawaiian Electric hopes to further improve decision making and regulatory support related to its transformer fleet. In its second year, Hawaiian Electric plans to use GDAC™ to more effectively assess the current and predicted health of its transformers to better plan and prioritize proactive replacements, strengthen spares assessment and contingency planning, and identify opportunities to further enhance its substation transformer preventive maintenance.

Hawaiian Electric recognized that GDAC™, from its founding, has the potential to develop new insights and enhance its current predictive capabilities by using advanced data science and analytics to learn from Hawaiian Electric’s and partner utilities’ historical transformer condition and failure data. Since then, in 2019, Hawaiian Electric helped increase GDAC™ membership by including its Maui County and Hawaiʻi Island operating areas, to expand analysis from more than 300 substation transformers on Oʻahu to 500-plus across Maui, Lānaʻi, Molokaʻi, and Hawaiʻi Island.

“Hawaiian Electric has in the past performed various types of predictive analytics to forecast annual failures, determine adequate spares inventory, and estimate expected remaining life for our substation transformers. We joined GDAC™ to enhance our capabilities by learning from other members and learning more about the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Rick Pinkerton, Hawaiian Electric director of asset planning & strategy.

“We’re thrilled that Hawaiian Electric has extended its GDAC™ membership. At the end of last year, Hawaiian Electric was named “Utility of the Year” by Utility Dive for being a trailblazer in the industry and for its commitment to 100% clean energy by 2045 or earlier. Having the support of such an innovative and driven company can only help lead the entire utility industry to a more data-driven future,” said Kristen Merrill, VIA’s Vice President, Client Delivery.

Hawaiian Electric is supporting the recruitment of other members to join GDAC™: Substation Transformers to bolster predictive capabilities, gain more insights about their fleet, and to share practices and expertise.

About VIA

VIA helps governments, regulators, and power companies deliver $200Bn in energy every year to more than 100 million customers. VIA’s privacy-preserving analytics software, Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) reduces the cost and improves the quality of service of electricity transmission and distribution using AI and blockchain technologies. TAC™ (patents pending) is the bridge that securely connects power company data, distributed across many locations, to potential AI solutions. VIA established the Global Data Asset Collaborative™ (GDAC™), built on top of TAC™, to allow multiple companies to securely pool data for more accurate analytics. Headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, VIA has received an InnovateMass grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and has been featured in Wired and Inc. Magazine for its leadership in technology innovation. For more information, please visit www.solvewithvia.com.

About Hawaiian Electric

Hawaiian Electric serves 95 percent of Hawaiʻi’s 1.4 million residents on the islands of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi Island, Maui, Lānaʻi and Molokaʻi, and has a goal of 100 percent renewables by 2045.