Leveraging Mobile and Analytics To Address Utility Challenges

Alberto Ruocco, CIO, American Electric Power

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Alberto Ruocco, CIO, American Electric Power

Thornton May recently identified the four trends that all CIOs are watching and managing: social, mobile, analytics and cloud. While all four of these trends are impacting AEP right now, the two that will have the most immediate impact are mobile and analytics.

The capabilities now available in Smartphones and tablet devices are enabling far more productivity. AEP’s field work force, in Transmission and Distribution in particular, is finding and developing applications to improve efficiency and effectiveness in their work with everything from more complex work order management to niche solutions like remote entry control to secure locations. Our IT organization is working with these business units to evaluate, identify and implement hardware and software standards to communicate, manage and secure data.

With the advent of the smart grid, AEP can collect, monitor and manage operations more effectively. Further, the IP-based technology creates a wealth of data that can be used to optimize energy consumption and educate AEP to help improve services. The IT organization is collaborating with business partners, vendors and analysts to define a practical big data/analytics architecture that will address questions previously difficult to answer. Our goal is to leverage new tools and existing business intelligence expertise to ultimately further enable business users.