Case Study
Consumer Electric Power Consumption Modification
Challenge
A major electric utility company that provides power to over 750,000 customers in Oregon, Washington, and California was tasked by their regulator with helping customers use energy more efficiently. In order to create a successful campaign, a large amount of data was needed from 100k customers – including billing, demographic and usage information. A year’s worth of usage data (meter readings every 15 minutes) for 100k customers equals about 3.5 billion data points.
Industry
Utilities
Data Type
Alphanumeric (.csv)
Project Duration
1 Month
Ongoing?
Yes
Solution
To ensure the information was correctly ingested, a “Data Sanity” process was performed on all data provided by the utility to verify accuracy, completeness, consistency, and reliability. The process involved collecting samples of 500 to 2000 customers and validating that the data conformed to the ingestion specifications provided. During this validation, sample data was run through a series of SQL queries which checked for continuity, unwanted characters, and data completeness. This was an iterative process: feedback regarding data quality and any adjustments needed was provided to the client to ensure that the data was as pristine as possible.
Outcome
Once the sample data was deemed “clean” enough, the complete data set was ingested and the energy saving campaign was created. This energy reduction campaigns resulted in an 8 – 15% reduction in usage, or 84 – 158 gigawatts of power saved over the course of one year.
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