Networks deliver critical services to millions of customers 24 hours per day. Whether it be water, electricity or telecommunications, it is fundamental to people’s livelihoods that these services are working well all the time.
To deliver these services, Network Operators need to see how supply and demand interact on a street level, as well as across its core asset infrastructure. By observing this dynamic real-time, operators know what to do when, so that customers continue to receive services reliably and, at least, to minimum specifications.
We've worked with large water utilities to:
Review EXPLORE-AI's Supply and Demand capabilities in more detail below:
The factors that impact supply and demand are complex. It makes a Control Room operator's job so much easier if these forces and trends can be displayed visually.
EXPLORE-AI's Supply and Demand solutions allow inputs, outputs and storage/reserve positions to be visualised at any level of detail that suits you. Trends can be monitored visually, and alerts configured to trigger when customer-specified limits are breached. Time scales and geographical boundaries can be adjusted according to the level of detail that the operator requires the visualisation.
Any utility is always attempting to balance the production of its product (be it water, electricity, gas or bandwidth) with the demand from its customers. Demand will fluctuate considerably throughout the day, and by season. The Control Room operators need to constantly balance the supplies coming in with the demand going out, along with any storage or reserve capacity, to ensure crucially that customers are never without supply, but also that there is no over-production and thus waste.
EXPLORE-AI's supply and demand solutions incorporate your inputs, reserves and outputs to ensure that you always know the position in any area, and can take proactive action when a problem situation appears likely to present itself.
It is a fact of life that we always have weather. Most of the time it is within its usual bounds for the season, so our systems are able to cope. Occasionally, though, extreme events come along - hurricanes, extremely heavy rainfall, freeze/thaws. It is often these weather events that wreak havoc amongst utility suppliers, and result in the best laid plans going awry.
EXPLORE-AI's supply and demand solutions can be customised to interact with advance weather prediction services to identify extreme conditions that are likely to cause issues with normal supply, demand and storage. The built-in intelligence allows the system to recognise patterns from previous such events, and predict where problems might arise. This forewarning enables the operators to take steps to ensure network resilience, perhaps by increasing reservoir storage in certain locations, for example.
