How VIA TAC™-kles Sensor Data

The electric grid is not just filled with sensors. It is a giant sensor.

Smart meters collect data from millions of customers, and in some countries like Spain and Denmark, from over 90% of homes. In addition, every utility collects load data in near real-time. 

Load, SCADA, smart meter, and other sensor data on the grid are extremely powerful datasets for advanced analytics. However, to paraphrase the Spiderman franchise, with great power comes great responsibility.

Many utilities are highly concerned about the responsibility that comes with these datasets. As a result, the data gets trapped for one or more of these four reasons:

  1. Data is too big: After you install a sensor, you might go from a reading once a month to 30 times a second. Data volume becomes an issue.
  2. Data is too confidential: Something in the sensor reveals critical infrastructure or personally identifiable information (PII). Smart meters can tell you vacation schedules and household size, for example. Many of the analytics insights can be considered protected information by consumer privacy laws (think CCPA and GDPR).
  3. Data is too distributed: Data from sensors by definition is going to be in a lot of locations, perhaps even across regional jurisdictional boundaries. This can make it expensive or impossible to aggregate.
  4. Data is too messy: Different sensors or meters or subsidiaries of a utility may have different data formats. Cleaning data is a time intensive process when performed manually.

VIA’s software platform, TAC™ was designed to address all four of these issues in power sector data. TAC™ reduces risk and improves IT efficiency for data access and data analysis projects. Follow the latest section of our website to learn about TAC™ features (in our Let’s TAC™ About It blog series) as well as new customer and project announcements.