DTN®, a world-renown data, analytics and technology company, has announced that they were selected by AusNet, one of the largest electricity distribution and transmission providers across Australia, to help improve the organisation’s outage response management.
What does DTN bring to the partnership?
DTN Storm Impact Analytics is an outage planning and prediction solution that combines hyperlocal weather intelligence, regional and historical weather data, and AusNet operational data with machine learning to better equip AusNet to respond to extreme weather events.
As the climate changes, effective management of weather-related risks is becoming more complex with increasing financial, operational, and regulatory impacts across a variety of industries. AusNet has deployed Storm Impact Analytics configured specifically for utility companies, enabling them to support weather disruption planning and response solutions.
DTN Storm Impact Analytics applies sophisticated machine learning models using a mix of the firm’s historical outage and weather data, along with other impact data such as vegetation and geography, and the utility’s specific risk thresholds, to help create a tailored weather risk and response based on real-time weather forecasts. Specific to a utility’s infrastructure and distribution network, critical insights are available well before an extreme weather event.
These planning insights inform both advanced warning and scenario modeling that provides incident commanders with the confidence to decide when a response is needed, and if so where to allocate and stage engineers in optimal places, so that they are positioned and equipped to request additional crews, monitor the situation, or resolve a particular issue.
What does the partnership mean for stakeholders?
“Utility firms are committed to improving service and seeking solutions that can help them adapt to environmental threats. AusNet is furthering their commitment by investing in innovative tech that improves their responses to unplanned outages and restores power as quickly as possible,” said Nic Wilson, DTN Director of Product Management – Weather Risk.
“After two major disaster events, the 2020 bushfires and June 2021 storms, we knew we had to change how we responded to big emergency events in Australia. We needed reliable insights which looked at the potential impacts to our service areas, tailored to our industry. DTN Storm Impact Analytics enables us to more confidently anticipate and respond to weather impacts on our network,” said AusNet Emergency Operations Specialist Sally Jacobs.
Storm Impact Analytics is part of the DTN Storm Risk solutions suite for energy firms. The outage planning and response platforms and weather intelligence application programming interfaces (APIs) are trusted by thousands of utilities worldwide to help anticipate, alert and manage through weather incidents that put extreme pressure on power grid management.
The solutions are tailored to support utilities as they improve emergency preparedness and outage restoration planning. More information on the Storm Risk suite can be found here.
