America’s electric utilities are undergoing an important transformation, driven by the need for technology innovation, compliance with federal, state, and local policies, adherence to non-competitive regulation, development of cleaner energy, and the changing expectations and needs of their customers. Successful response to these environmental and societal pressures requires creation and execution of both tactical and strategic plans.
How We Can Help
Compliance
Protecting critical infrastructure assets is of paramount importance to an electric utility’s success and to the safety and well-being of its customers. Implementing and tracking that compliance is a significant undertaking.
We have extensive experience with implementing CIP controls and developing data analytics to monitor those controls and ensure they have been applied where required. Building on this experience, we have also implemented technology-based solutions to support WECC audits and reporting.
Cyber Security
Cyber security is an ever-evolving challenge for the electric utility industry, and intrusion attempts have increased in frequency and scope.
We have managed multiple projects tasked with protecting sensitive employee data, preventing unauthorized access to substation assets, preventing unauthorized access to customer data (risk-based authentication), enhancing identity-proofing procedures, and implementing technology-based solutions to enhance user-authentication processes (MFAand federated SSO).
Technology Modernization
Improved compliance capabilities, enhanced cyber security, and operational efficiency increases often requires significant technology investments.
We have managed several technology modernization projects, including meter data management, identity management, substation critical security controls (CSCs), and CIP and SOX compliance monitoring and reporting, and outage management. We also led multiple parallel efforts to upgrade and integrate systems with CAISO in support of entry into the Energy Imbalance Market (EIM).
Data Management
Electric utilities possess vast amounts of data, and it is critical that this data be managed effectively and efficiently. But, the challenge is often where and how to begin.
We have led multiple initiatives in this area, including enterprise data warehouse (EDW) platform upgrades, extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) platform upgrades, data consolidations for corporate scorecard/dashboard analytics, SOX, CIP, and CSC data integrations, rate case improvement, and the decommissioning of legacy data marts and repositories.
Business Process Improvement / Reengineering
Regulated industries constantly strive to reduce material waste, improve efficiency, and become more cost-effective. Companies are aware of these challenges, but often unable to act on them due to enormous work backlogs and budget constraints.
We have designed and implemented workflow automation and for several departmental functions, including technology feasibility exception (TFE) management and synchronization with WECC, identity-proofing processes for the security help desk, access management granting, removal, and reporting, and CSC compliance monitoring and violation notifications. We have designed process improvements for asset management, security logging, change requests, and sensitive employee data management and handling.