Gaining Clearer Insights with Imagery in the Power Industry

The Power and Energy industry has undergone change in the last decade as it adjusts to more competitive market forces in US and overseas markets. In the US, it remains the last major regulated industry but it some States, retail electricity customers can now choose their electricity company and new wholesale electricity trading markets, which were previously nonexistent, are now operating in many regions of the country. For many utilities worldwide, it is a period of adjustment to competitive market forces and pricing pressure. For many, cost reduction strategies are underway to offset increased pricing pressure, as well as investigation and implementation of new ways to maintain an effective service level.

Power and energy companies worldwide have similar traits: they operate large scale facilities and assets which require maintenance and monitoring to preserve customer service satisfaction levels. Their facility sites and assets have a direct impact on the surrounding population, either as a service area or as a potential impact area in the event of an emergency. Maintaining such large pools of assets requires constant monitoring, surveying and vigorous maintenance. Utilities have been increasingly turning to alternative technologies to create more cost effective solutions in the planning, installation and maintenance of their utility systems. One of these technologies undergoing wider adoption within the industry is high resolution digital earth imagery.

Once the domain of the geographical information system (GIS) expert, aerial and satellite imagery has gone mainstream as more users in industries ranging from commercial property development, engineering and construction to public safety organizations are realizing the powerful impact images can have on their ability to identify greater detail from location based information and how the use of pictorial images makes it easier and faster to disseminate and communicate those issues for improved decision making. Industry leaders with the foresight to see the possibilities of imagery as an improved analytical and decision making capability can give their organizations a competitive edge by adopting these benefits across their entire organization.

Site based information is a key component for power and energy companies to implement cost savings programs. There is a worldwide trend from utility companies who want to leverage their existing investment in spatial data to deliver spatially imagery enabled asset management and network management solutions which have proven to deliver enhanced analysis to reduce operating expenses. However, a key obstacle in making this a reality for many utilities is the availability and accuracy of land based information. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) typically used in location based decision planning rely on the accuracy of mapping services provided to them. However, for many countries and even areas of the United States, mapping data is outdated, inaccurate or both. For utilities, reliance on mapping data for land use and governance and site location selection is a highly risky business. To address this, many companies send out land surveying teams to create their own land bases which, because of its high cost of collection, only gets updated on a two to five year cycle. Digital imagery, like that collected from DigitalGlobe’s Quickbird (satellite, the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite at 60 centimeter resolution, provide a more reliable, accurate means for land based decision making and planning without the time and overhead of onsite inspection. Power and energy companies can acquire highly accurate imagery for a fraction of the cost that it takes them to create their own digital land base information. The lower initial cost of acquisition also enables more updates to occur with greater frequency as satellite providers create vast libraries of digital imagery that can be incorporated into existing land map applications or other projects as new geospatial content becomes available.

Getting access to highly accurate, current imagery at a lower cost also means that it can be used more often and becomes a useful monitoring tool for utility company’s assets, all of which can be accomplished by office based employees accessing centralized imagery databases. Visual change detection can reveal many issues that affect utility company’s assets and services and how to implement preventative programs to effect expense management. Spatial imagery can reveal the types of vegetation surrounding pipelines, its seasonal growth, potential encroachment risks, surrounding water bodies or potential flood plains. For electric companies, using change detection allows them to monitor growth in right of way locations and deploy service operations before potential liability or damage is incurred. It also allows them to plan the allotment of maintenance funding based upon historical vegetation growth and improve the overall effectiveness of their field maintenance operations. Other types of utilities such as gas companies, where potential damage to pipelines could impact the evacuation of the surrounding population area, derive even greater efficiency in their risk mitigation and government compliance efforts.

No one can underestimate the cost of a failure of a power system, either because of the service disruption to thousands of users or to the potential danger to people and the surrounding environment. Disaster recovery planning is a staple of many industries but preventative measures are by far the largest safety measure that any industry can take. Imagery from high resolution sources such as satellite and aerial can identify risk potentials far in advance saving companies millions in service disruptions. Vegetation growth near power-lines, and heavy growth in high risk areas (e.g. hurricane and flood routes), can have a detrimental effect if not monitored and maintained. Downed power lines cause service disruptions and incur high cost emergency maintenance - - all at a higher cost than periodic review through imagery.

Facilities monitoring with variations in vegetation growth

Power and energy companies need to focus on providing an advanced level of services in highly competitive markets based upon usage demands, seasonal impacts, light or heavy industry densities, and restricted or environmentally sensitive areas. When dealing with large metropolitan regions or remote areas satellite imagery is an ideal tool to quickly and easily identify power usage types for predicting future capacity requirements and to add impact to sales and marketing tools when introducing new services. Aerial imagery is also used over major metropolitan areas to predict future capacity demand by monitoring the urban growth and density year over year. Aerial imagery like that provided by commercial providers like DigitalGlobe shows an outstanding amount of pictorial detail, even down to being able to view the amount of swimming pools and HVAC equipment within any given square mile that may impact seasonal demand or brown outs.

Corpus Christi Flood Plain Mapping Hurricane Greg Storm Surge February 2004

Monitoring power and energy assets is further complicated when dealing with remote locations or where mapping data is outdated, which is frequently the case with countries without national mapping projects. Imagen, a reseller of DigitalGlobe imagery, has provided imagery to AES Tiete S.A. an electric power generation company in Brazil comprised of 10 operating hydroelectric plants along the Tiete, Grande Pardo, and Mogi-Gauco Rivers in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. AES Tiete S.A. operates contracts to sell electricity to major electricity distribution companies throughout Latin America, United States, Europe and Asia. Because of the scale of its operations, its remote locations and lack of highly accurate land base information, land surveying was complex and costly. Using high resolution imagery tasked from the Quickbird satellite and also imagery contained in the DigitalGlobe library, AS Tiete was able to prepare study reports and analysis which quickly improved the management processes of its border occupations, defined an improved contingency plan based upon a current pictorial view and was able to provide greater planning for access to and from the reservoirs given seasonal environment conditions. All of this was accomplished with reduced reliance on field surveying and enhanced data to support juridical concerns.

Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), one of the largest combination natural gas and electric utilities in the United States serving approximately 5.1 million .1 million electricity distribution customers and approximately 4.2 million natural gas distribution customers, has used digital earth imagery from DigitalGlobe in several of its business support departments.

With the help of the DigitalGlobe's ImageConnect Web plug-in for GIS mapping software, high-resolution imagery has allowed PG&E’s staff to analyze the public presence around its pipelines. The organization’s risk management team uses DigitalGlobe’s high-resolution visuals to determine how to allocate funds for preventative maintenance along the pipelines, ranging from putting up warning markings over the pipeline corridor to determining where there may be a need to improve or replace an existing pipeline. PG&E’s GIS department has found real value in ImageConnect when they need exact land information, like road centerlines and structure locations. Additionally, the integrity management team uses DigitalGlobe’s imagery and technology to determine “high-consequence areas,” where a pipeline rupture could have a significant impact to the public.

Imagery is a valuable analysis tool throughout the complete lifecycle of an energy company, providing greater degree of real time detail and geo-location accuracy for location based projects.

Right of Way Governance - Imagery helps electric and gas utilities optimally manage land ownership rights in relation to right of ways, monitors encroachment on these lands and practices efficient vegetation management by assessing where vegetation is too close to transmission and distribution lines.

Facility & Asset Management - Water and wastewater, gas and electric utilities better protect their investments with accurate basemaps of ground assets such as facilities, tanks and real estate. Imagery is updated over time and compared to older images to track changes and assess maintenance needs.

Planning - Effective planning is critical to all utility organizations because it typically results in cost savings. Having the bird’s eye view of the ground and a record of change over time that imagery offers plays a key role in site selection, parcel mapping and land management.

Engineering - Utilities professionals need imagery early in the design process to engineer and construct new facilities and to visualize the impact of new construction on the landscape and surrounding community. It is also used to design site access which lessens construction costs based upon elevations, soil erosion and flooding potential. Why build a site upon sub-optimal land when imagery can mitigate millions of dollars in repairs and maintenance?

Environmental Studies - Current, precise imagery is also critical data in environmental impact assessments, watershed analysis and ground water management. These studies must be accurate for organizations to maintain regulatory compliance and can be used for risk mitigation and compliance meetings.

Sunnyvale,California, Quickbird 2.44 meter multispectral

Logistics and Routing - Private electric and municipal water utilities spend much time managing field crews. Using imagery as a base layer and means of geometrically correcting vector road layers allows the creation of accurate road networks for more efficient routing of employees and service operations.

DigitalGlobe is the industry leader of geospatial content, products and related services. It provides centralized advanced web imagery solutions for professional organizations which need to distribute and support high resolution earth imagery across the enterprise, including access for large groups of remote and field based teams. Its large collection capacity from its satellite, including its pending launch of Worlview I and its aerial collection program ensure that is has the broadest depth of global coverage suitable to energy and power company applications. With over 320 milllion sq km2 of global high resolution imagery available in its ImageLibrary, refreshed annually with 70 million sq km2 sq of new imagery, it offers a lower total cost of ownership for imagery projects which involve ongoing monitoring across large spans of geographic area. It is focused on providing earth imagery of the highest possible quality and accuracy through its technology advanced collection programs, its ground stations, and its image production capabilities.

DigitalGlobe provides instant, easy to use access to its ImageLibrary through on-demand services for enterprise applications, desktop software, web-enabled services, cell phones, PDAs and GPS systems. For those situations which demand the utmost level of disaster recovery, it offers an offline viewer deployable to field operators and service technicians. All of these products have access to a centralized ImageLibrary of the most accurate, up-to-date imagery commercially available today. The centralization of quality imagery into one-end-to end solution provides great benefit to energy and utility companies whose disparate workforce, in the field, headquarters or decision support operations, can tap into a consistent set of up to date images and access it in the method that suites them best but all knowing that they are utilizing the same set of data to provide optimal impact to their projects.

For more information, contact DigitalGlobe at 1.800.655.7929 or www.digitalglobe.com