[Leslie Cook (Adm)]

Thanks for allowing UAI to feature you, @Victoria, in this month’s member spotlight! It has been a pleasure to work with you as a Community Leader for the Grid Analytics Community. I loved reading your interview and getting to know you even better. I especially loved your favorite quote at the end. I am going to re-share it on our “NOTES TO INSPIRE” section on the Ask Your Network homepage under Announcements. :-) 

Thanks!
Leslie​

——————————
Leslie Cook
Membership & Digital Engagement Manager
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
719-203-8650, lcook@utilityanalytics.com
——————————
——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 12-01-2021 15:20
From: Kevin Praet
Subject: December (2021) Member Spotlight: Victoria White (Oncor Electric Delivery)

Victoria White is an active UAI member and provides outstanding influence and contributions to the UAI community through any of our multiple channels, including, but not limited to engagement on UAI Connect, volunteering with UAI, involvement and/or leadership in monthly Community Conversations, and/or speaking at UAI events, plus so much. As thanks, we are featuring her in the UAI Member Spotlight. Victoria White is the Advanced Metering Systems Design Supervisor at Oncor Electric Delivery in Texas. She primarily works on managing the team that strengthens and maintains the Advanced Metering System (AMS) and guides efforts on root-cause analysis based projects within Oncor regarding topics such as AMS analysis, Storm Impact Prediction, and Outage Analysis. She is a well-respected speaker at multiple industry conferences (i.e. DistribuTech, UAI) and organizations (i.e. AEIC, IEEE).

 

Kevin: How did you get into the utility analytics industry?

Member: I have been an engineer at Oncor since 2014 and since my start have been given opportunities to engage and lead various analytics projects regarding our distribution system. It was definitely not what I expected when I first started my career but I’ve quickly become intertwined in the intricacies of the analytical world and am happy that this is where my work has lead me.

 

Kevin: What project have you enjoyed working on most in your career?

Member: My most enjoyable project has been a distribution damage prediction model. This was a collaboration effort at Oncor where I lead a small group and together we created a model that predicts the damage created by storms in the Oncor territory. This project really sparked my interest in analytics and to this day is something that I love to talk about and share with others.

 

Kevin: What has been your biggest professional challenge and how did you work through it?

Member: In my particular career path the biggest challenge has been working to communicate effectively to other non-engineering technical individuals as well as non-technical collaborators. I didn’t have to work on this communication path at the beginning of my career but as time passed it quickly became something I needed to figure out. Once I identified it as a shortcoming correcting the issue wasn’t as difficult. I work to make sure that how I share progress and updates on projects can be effectively shared and understood despite technical background.

 

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?

Member: My biggest piece of advice to myself would have been to take python in college or additional predictive analytics courses; having to learn those on the job was a challenge especially when there is not a SME for that subject at Oncor.

 

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?

Member: I love to discuss predictive analytics projects and based on my current role various ways to further utilize the large amounts of metering and AMS mesh networking information. There is so much we are still learning and working to leverage.

 

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

Do you have any final thoughts, ideas, or comments you would like to share with your fellow UAI members?

Member: I would love to share one of my favorite quotes which helps point out that every day is a chance to try.

“However, I continue to try and I continue, indefatigably, to reach out. There’s no way I can single-handedly save the world or, perhaps, even make a perceptible difference – but how ashamed I would be to let a day pass without making one more effort.”

-Isaac Asimov

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