[Ben Ettlinger]

Thanks Leslie; I’m just driven by attempting to extract the value proposition in UAI. It’s greatest benefit is the collaboration amongst utility peers that it can offer​ and help us all succeed in what we do. It’s one of the only platforms that can offer this. As it’s not a vast amalgamated conglomerate of disparate members like LinkedIn with a constant stream of often irrelevant postings. UAI should be a controlled concentrated group of utility experts with boots to the ground that have a vast body of knowledge and experience to share. To be blunt, as I told Mike Reisner at renewal time, with out that value it’s difficult for me to justify membership to senior management.

——————————
Ben Ettlinger
Emerging Technologies
Enterprise Architecture & Engineering Group
New York Power Authority
White Plains, NY
914 681 6496
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 05-11-2020 12:14
From: Leslie Cook
Subject: Member Spotlight: Ben Ettlinger

Thank you, @Ben, for being an active member of UAI. Thank you for your enthusiasm and always prompting engagement from others with your posts and items you share on UAI Connect. We also appreciate your constant attendance and active participation during the monthly UAI Community Conversations. We are proud to feature you as our first UAI Member Spotlight. Thank you, Ben!

Cheers to you, Ben!

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————

Original Message:
Sent: 05-07-2020 19:35
From: Kevin Praet
Subject: Member Spotlight: Ben Ettlinger

Ben Ettlinger is an active UAI member and provides outstanding influence and contributions to the UAI community through his high-level of engagement on UAI Connect and his active involvement in the monthly UAI Community Conversations. As thanks, we are featuring Ben in the very first UAI Member Spotlight. The UAI Member Spotlight is a new monthly feature on UAI Connect. Our Member Spotlight will feature a UAI member each month; either an individual member for his/her level of engagement, influence, and contribution to the UAI community or a UAI Utility Member organization for something outstanding they have accomplished.

Ben has been in the utility industry for close to 30 years and mostly in data related capacities.

Kevin: How did you get into the utility analytics industry?
Ben: My tenure at NYPA has been data centric since I joined. I began as a data modeler and designed relational databases for many years, eventually combining that with data administration, and then from there, since my concentration was data, I moved on to manage a major billing conversion data project into SAP BW. This, in turn, lead me to managing the SAP BW environment. From there, I moved on to manage numerous other data related efforts. When the idea of data analytics emerged, I got the nod to begin creating a Digital Analytics Group.

Kevin: What project have you enjoyed working on most in your career?
Ben: I found the greatest satisfaction in successfully building and managing the analytics group. At the time it was challenging, new, innovative, scientific, allowed me to leverage the years-long accumulate knowledge of utility industry data and finally an opportunity to appreciate mathematics, which was not my favorite subject in school.

Kevin: What has been your biggest professional challenge and how did you work through it?
Ben: In analytics, the biggest challenge was hiring data scientists who would have the background and correct fit to support our analytics needs, and within the financial resources made available to us. We were successful though, with plain old put the rubber to the road, searching through scores and scores of resumes. Even with job service companies who use their own analytics, it was quite a challenge, but thankfully we were successful in finding what we were looking for.

Kevin: If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice before entering the utility analytics industry, what would it be?
Ben: Understand the complexity of analytics, the challenges in finding qualified personnel, the challenges to introduce the business to the power of analytics and, getting on your soap box to preach the power of analytics and what it can achieve.

Kevin: What would you like to talk to fellow colleagues and members about in UAI Connect? Or, what issues or topics would you like to see more discussions on in UAI Connect?
Ben: Three things; use cases, use cases use cases. Three more things, technology, technology and more technology. I’m not asking to share your secret algorithms, although I will not stop you. We are always looking for innovative analytics and technology ideas that we can apply to our own situation, especially in this Covid-19 environment. Just this morning, I discovered a new air purifying device designed for Covid and a project to determine if Covid spread via sewage waste analysis. We also want to hear about what utilities are doing in terms of predictive and prescriptive analytics or edge devices with regard to river ice prediction, transmission and generation asset health, flood prediction, any other emerging technology both hardware and software that will enhance the utility business.

Kevin: Thank you so much for sharing with us and for being a highly engaged member of UAI!

——————————
Kevin Praet
Membership Coordinator
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
Boulder CO
315-440-3033
——————————

[Leslie Cook (Adm)]

Thank you, @Ben, for being an active member of UAI. Thank you for your enthusiasm and always prompting engagement from others with your posts and items you share on UAI Connect. We also appreciate your constant attendance and active participation during the monthly UAI Community Conversations. We are proud to feature you as our first UAI Member Spotlight. Thank you, Ben! 

Cheers to you, Ben!

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 05-07-2020 19:35
From: Kevin Praet
Subject: Member Spotlight: Ben Ettlinger

Ben Ettlinger is an active UAI member and provides outstanding influence and contributions to the UAI community through his high-level of engagement on UAI Connect and his active involvement in the monthly UAI Community Conversations. As thanks, we are featuring Ben in the very first UAI Member Spotlight. The UAI Member Spotlight is a new monthly feature on UAI Connect. Our Member Spotlight will feature a UAI member each month; either an individual member for his/her level of engagement, influence, and contribution to the UAI community or a UAI Utility Member organization for something outstanding they have accomplished.

Ben has been in the utility industry for close to 30 years and mostly in data related capacities.

Kevin: How did you get into the utility analytics industry?
Ben: My tenure at NYPA has been data centric since I joined. I began as a data modeler and designed relational databases for many years, eventually combining that with data administration, and then from there, since my concentration was data, I moved on to manage a major billing conversion data project into SAP BW. This, in turn, lead me to managing the SAP BW environment. From there, I moved on to manage numerous other data related efforts. When the idea of data analytics emerged, I got the nod to begin creating a Digital Analytics Group.

Kevin: What project have you enjoyed working on most in your career?
Ben: I found the greatest satisfaction in successfully building and managing the analytics group. At the time it was challenging, new, innovative, scientific, allowed me to leverage the years-long accumulate knowledge of utility industry data and finally an opportunity to appreciate mathematics, which was not my favorite subject in school.

Kevin: What has been your biggest professional challenge and how did you work through it?
Ben: In analytics, the biggest challenge was hiring data scientists who would have the background and correct fit to support our analytics needs, and within the financial resources made available to us. We were successful though, with plain old put the rubber to the road, searching through scores and scores of resumes. Even with job service companies who use their own analytics, it was quite a challenge, but thankfully we were successful in finding what we were looking for.

Kevin: If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice before entering the utility analytics industry, what would it be?
Ben: Understand the complexity of analytics, the challenges in finding qualified personnel, the challenges to introduce the business to the power of analytics and, getting on your soap box to preach the power of analytics and what it can achieve.

Kevin: What would you like to talk to fellow colleagues and members about in UAI Connect? Or, what issues or topics would you like to see more discussions on in UAI Connect?
Ben: Three things; use cases, use cases use cases. Three more things, technology, technology and more technology. I’m not asking to share your secret algorithms, although I will not stop you. We are always looking for innovative analytics and technology ideas that we can apply to our own situation, especially in this Covid-19 environment. Just this morning, I discovered a new air purifying device designed for Covid and a project to determine if Covid spread via sewage waste analysis. We also want to hear about what utilities are doing in terms of predictive and prescriptive analytics or edge devices with regard to river ice prediction, transmission and generation asset health, flood prediction, any other emerging technology both hardware and software that will enhance the utility business.

Kevin: Thank you so much for sharing with us and for being a highly engaged member of UAI!

——————————
Kevin Praet
Membership Coordinator
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
Boulder CO
315-440-3033
——————————

[Leslie Cook (Adm)]

Hello UAI Members,

Don’t forget to register for the upcoming series of Real-Talk Roundtables on COVID-19 taking place on May 14, 15, and 18, 2020!  Learn more about the roundtables on my original post and register for one or all three member-exclusive roundtables. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to hold collaborative, candid conversations with fellow members regarding the COVID-19 pandemic to help you gain a better understanding of how each of your organizations are dealing with the situation.

Register today and I’ll see you online later this week!

Thanks!

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 05-01-2020 17:06
From: Leslie Cook
Subject: Your Invited to a Series of UAI Real-Talk Roundtables on COVID-19

Hello UAI Members,

You told UAI that you desire to hold collaborative, candid discussions with fellow members regarding the COVID-19 pandemic to help you gain a better understanding of how each of your organizations are dealing with the situation. UAI is delighted to bring you together during special member-exclusive Real-Talk Roundtables.

Learn more information about the Real-Talk Roundtables below and register today to attend these timely events!
In regard to these roundtables, some members said they want to maintain a strategic focus while other members want to get a little more granular during the discussion. After asking our members to submit questions on topics they want to discuss, we actually scheduled three different virtual Real-Talk Roundtables. Each virtual roundtable will be scheduled for 1-hour. Join us for one or all three of these interactive discussions to ask questions and get answers from partnered collaboration between UAI members. During each of these roundtables, we will start with the questions recorded below, each of which were submitted in advance by UAI members. We will then move on to your real-time questions, so be prepared to bring your questions to the table during these collaborative sessions.

What to expect during Real-Talk Roundtables?
Engage in lively discussions, exchange knowledge, share information, learn with each other and help one another move forward during these unprecedented times brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. During Real-Talk Roundtables, we encourage you to get to know one another, turn on your video, and truly engage in the conversation (video not required, but encouraged). The more you put into the discussion, the more you will get out of it. We look forward to “seeing” you online soon!

Real-Talk Roundtable: A Strategic Focus on COVID-19
Thursday, May 14 at 10:00 am MT (9am PT / 11am CT / 12pm ET)
PRE-REGISTER TODAY!

• What information is helpful for leadership at your organization to view or monitor as we begin talking about returning to work? Do you have any examples of how you are providing this information you could share? What are some strategic questions that leadership are asking you in regards to analytics related to COVID-19?
• What is your organization doing analytically in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting certain types of utilities?
• Do you plan to develop strategies for regulatory recovery – meaning building the case for rate increases to cover the impacts of these changes?
• How has Covid-19 affected development projects? Has your company circled the wagons and are just keeping the lights on? Have projects been put on hold and/or is money/resources being reallocated?

Real-Talk Roundtable: A Focus on Load Forecasting for COVID-19
Friday, May 15 at 10:00 am MT (9am PT / 11am CT / 12pm ET)
PRE-REGISTER TODAY!

• What are your challenges with load forecasting and workforce optimization. The load and the workforce both “look” different in the current environment; so it would be interesting to see how utility leaders are managing this change and, where applicable, applying analytics to get ahead of these challenges.
• In regard to Corporate Energy Forecasting (CEF), where have you been able to use real-time AMI data to study how energy usage has changed and create forecasts of what things might look like as the community at large transitions back to work?
• How has your utility adjusted its short-term and long-term load forecasts to account for a stay-at-home order and/or economic recession?
• Impacts on Forecasting:

• How are load forecasts being adjusted for the impacts of COVID-19 given the fact that there is very limited data available – are you waiting for more data, or are you making assumptions based on current knowledge? 
• What sort of assumptions are you making regarding the persistence of COVID-19 impacts – are you assuming a “new normal”, meaning that you expect permanent changes to your load; or do you expect that load should “revert to the mean” after 2, 3, 5, years? 
• Do you expect revenue to be a direct function of loads, or are you factoring in greater defaults/deferrals as a result of large portions of the economy potentially facing financial hardship or, even, bankruptcy?   
• Do you plan to develop strategies for regulatory recovery – meaning building the case for rate increases to cover the impacts of these changes?

Real-Talk Roundtable: A Granular Focus on COVID-19
Monday, May, 18 at 12:00 pm MT (11am PT / 1pm CT / 2pm ET)
PRE-REGISTER TODAY!

• What data modeling are you doing for COVID-19 analytics?
• Will this event result in expansion of your resiliency team?
• What system or service-class load impacts are utilities seeing under stay-at-home orders?
• How have these impacts changed with changes in the weather?
• For utilities, who has suspended disconnections for non-payment? How have you adjusted your revenue forecasts to account for arrears?
• What use cases can you share in regard to your load analytics, payment analytics and workforce planning in regard to COVID-19?
• Has your company developed any specific dashboards, reporting, or predictive analytics related to COVID-19?
• Questions not specifically related to analytics, but still questions that members want to discuss with other members:

• What will be the residual effects of the COVID-19 work at home environment?  More people will be working from home permanently? Will your company have people working from home once a week, twice a week?
• With much of our workforce now tele-working, how is the reliability (or lack thereof) of your various interconnection technologies, such as WebEx, Zoom, Slack, etc.? 

• In addition to those third party technologies, we are also very reliant on our own corporate networks to be able to access our work-related files and communicate with our colleagues. While I have experienced very little in the way of issues personally, I know that has not been the case for some of my colleagues. So, my question for the group is, what steps, if any, are your firms taking (or investments that you are making) to either improve these technologies, or to provide additional alternative technologies, so that if one tech fails, your associates have the option to use a different solution?

We look forward to seeing you online soon for UAI Real-Talk Roundtables!

Thanks!

     Leslie

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@endeavorb2b.com
——————————

[Cheryl Pressley]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for sharing your insights on Data Literacy. We are also looking to develop a program for the entire company that will provide various levels of training. 

Thanks,
Cheryl

——————————
Cheryl Pressley
IT Supervisor, Data Management & Analytics
Southern Company
Atlanta GA
4045062190
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2020 13:13
From: Mark Drewes
Subject: Data Literacy

At SRP, we are standing up what we call our “Analytics Development Program,” as part of our Analytics Community, to help increase Data Literacy in the workforce.

Our main focus, initially, is on creating a common “base-level” of analytics knowledge so that students from multiple disciplines and business areas come out with a shared vocabulary and understanding of analytics, data, and methods.  Our hope is that this will lead to more analytics use, and increased collaboration between analysts over time.

Our current curriculum starts with Data Scientists from our Analytics Community leading an in-person introduction course, and then augmenting that with some online learning and regular meetups over the course of the program.

In the future, we are also planning on creating a more-compact and higher-level version of this curriculum to deliver to leaders throughout the organization.

——————————
Mark Drewes
Business Intelligence Architect
Salt River Project
Phoenix AZ
6022365977
——————————

Original Message:
Sent: 05-04-2020 12:49
From: Cheryl Pressley
Subject: Data Literacy

Hi all,

We’re working on developing a Data Literacy program and I would love to get some feedback from the group on the following questions:

1. If you’ve created or are creating a Data Literacy program, what categories of learning are you offering or do you plan to offer?
2. Are you identifying or planning to identify relevant training?
3. If yes, what training sources are you utilizing?

Thanks so much for your feedback!

Best regards,

——————————
Cheryl Pressley
Data Analytics & Reporting
Southern Company
Office: 404.506.2190 | Email: ccpressl@southernco.com
——————————

[Cheryl Pressley]

Hi Vijoy,

Thank you for providing your presentation of Analytics U (love this!) and the curriculum you delivered to the business. This great information and thank you for sharing with the group!

Thanks,
Cheryl

——————————
Cheryl Pressley
IT Supervisor, Data Management & Analytics
Southern Company
Atlanta GA
4045062190
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 05-11-2020 10:00
From: Vijoy Mathew
Subject: Data Literacy

Cheryl – Sarah Green and I presented the Analytics U (university) effort at Consumer Energy, deck is attached. Please see slide 16, talks about specific courses for the 3 levels. We picked courses from Edx, Coursera and Youtube; mostly free courses we curated. If you want the specific courses I can find the links though you may want to check out the latest online offerings and create your own curated list.

——————————
Vijoy Mathew
Executive Director, IT Enterprise Architecture and Application Portfolio Services
Consumers Energy
Jackson MI
5177683125
——————————

Original Message:
Sent: 05-04-2020 12:49
From: Cheryl Pressley
Subject: Data Literacy

Hi all,

We’re working on developing a Data Literacy program and I would love to get some feedback from the group on the following questions:

1. If you’ve created or are creating a Data Literacy program, what categories of learning are you offering or do you plan to offer?
2. Are you identifying or planning to identify relevant training?
3. If yes, what training sources are you utilizing?

Thanks so much for your feedback!

Best regards,

——————————
Cheryl Pressley
Data Analytics & Reporting
Southern Company
Office: 404.506.2190 | Email: ccpressl@southernco.com
——————————

[Cheryl Pressley]

Hi Claude,

Thank you for sharing this information about the training at AEIC. We’ll look into this further.

Thanks,
Cheryl

——————————
Cheryl Pressley
IT Supervisor, Data Management & Analytics
Southern Company
Atlanta GA
4045062190
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 05-08-2020 08:46
From: Claude Godin
Subject: Data Literacy

Hi All

 

Just wanted to mention that the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies Load Research and Analytics Committee (AEIC) offers some really good training  courses at three levels. (Fundamentals, Statistical Methods, and Advanced). The courses are geared more to the analysis of load profile data and their uses within the utility (Cost of Service, Load forecast, Distribution Planning, Measurement and Verification, DER impact planning, etc…). I believe internal planners of enterprise systems would get a lot of insights on how data is used within utilities from this community as they have been dealing with large data sets of interval data for 30 years.  I know it’s one piece of a larger puzzle, but getting  a good understanding of how data get used within the enterprise siloes makes it easier to architect an efficient landscape.

 

Some additional insights…..

 

https://blogs.dnvgl.com/energy/what-are-the-risks-of-drowning-if-i-build-my-own-data-lake     

 

 

 

Sincerely,

Claude Godin

Senior Principal Consultant, Policy Advisory and Research, Key Initiatives, PAR

 

DNV GL Energy Insights USA, Inc.
claude.godin@dnvgl.com
Mobile +1 (919) 539-3231  

dnvgl.com  |  LinkedIn

DNV GL® – a member of Det Norske Veritas® group.

 

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**************************************************************************************

Original Message——

Cheryl / Mark / Pat:

I had a question for you – what do you mean by Data Literacy?  In other words, what are you hoping to accomplish with this curriculum?  TVA, my employer, has implemented something similar, although I think it’s just in a pilot and not rolled out to the whole company.  But it’s not really clear to me what we expect to accomplish with these courses.  We are still in the early stages of curation of our data – meaning that data still “lives” in various different data sources, and some of them talk to each other, but others don’t, and there’s no central catalog of all of the data available, so not everyone knows where to get data, and there are duplicated sources in some instances, and not a “single source of truth.”  It seems to me that all of these issues really need to be resolved, so that the Enterprise Data Lake (or warehouse) becomes the single source for information for everyone in the organization; and then we could spend some time educating people about how to work with the data to extract relevant analyses.  I just feel like if we conduct these courses now, we spend most of the time in the courses talking about how to connect to various data sources, and not enough time talking about how to extract the relevant data and analyze it correctly.

I also think that once you have a good data lake / warehouse, and make it available to everyone, people will learn the techniques they need on their own, and you won’t need a detailed curriculum.

That’s just my two-cents worth.

Kaz.

——————————
Kaz Shakir
Sr. Program Manager, Power Operations Asset Planning
The Tennessee Valley Authority
——————————

[Claude Godin]

Hey Cheryl

 

Southern Company is an AEIC member and Cre’Shannon Reuven who heads up your Load Research Department is the course organizer for the AEIC.  

 

 

Sincerely,

Claude Godin

Senior Principal Consultant, Policy Advisory and Research, Key Initiatives, PAR

 

DNV GL Energy Insights USA, Inc.
claude.godin@dnvgl.com
Mobile +1 (919) 539-3231  

dnvgl.com  |  LinkedIn

DNV GL® – a member of Det Norske Veritas® group.

 

——Original Message——

Hi Claude,

Thank you for sharing this information about the training at AEIC. We’ll look into this further.

Thanks,
Cheryl

——————————
Cheryl Pressley
IT Supervisor, Data Management & Analytics
Southern Company
Atlanta GA
4045062190
——————————

[Josef Koressel]

Vijoy, 

Thanks for sharing that document.  It’s helpful to see how other people are approaching data literacy for their work communities.  I am working with several analytically minded people in various departments at work to build our analytic community.  One thing that i’m helping with is co-leading a monthly session called R-Hour where myself or someone in the analytics community discusses a problem that can be solved with the open source program R.  We have had a lot of interest in these meetings with over 30 people attending the virtual meetings.  Topics include:  predictive modeling, text analysis, working with ggplot2 and many others.  

Josef Koressel

Sr Data Analyst | Distribution Analytics and Special Contracts | LG&E and KU

O: 502-627-3758

lge-ku.com

——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 05-11-2020 10:00
From: Vijoy Mathew
Subject: Data Literacy

Cheryl – Sarah Green and I presented the Analytics U (university) effort at Consumer Energy, deck is attached. Please see slide 16, talks about specific courses for the 3 levels. We picked courses from Edx, Coursera and Youtube; mostly free courses we curated. If you want the specific courses I can find the links though you may want to check out the latest online offerings and create your own curated list.

——————————
Vijoy Mathew
Executive Director, IT Enterprise Architecture and Application Portfolio Services
Consumers Energy
Jackson MI
5177683125
——————————

Original Message:
Sent: 05-04-2020 12:49
From: Cheryl Pressley
Subject: Data Literacy

Hi all,

We’re working on developing a Data Literacy program and I would love to get some feedback from the group on the following questions:

1. If you’ve created or are creating a Data Literacy program, what categories of learning are you offering or do you plan to offer?
2. Are you identifying or planning to identify relevant training?
3. If yes, what training sources are you utilizing?

Thanks so much for your feedback!

Best regards,

——————————
Cheryl Pressley
Data Analytics & Reporting
Southern Company
Office: 404.506.2190 | Email: ccpressl@southernco.com
——————————