Utility Information Integration - Vision, Benefits, Strategies, and Status

Successfully incorporating utility engineering functions into business decisions requires integrating the numeric-intensive world of the engineer with business systems that are designed for maximizing economic return. Today the engineer must make more high level analyses based on operational data to accommodate the needs of short-term business decisions. These decisions benefit greatly from improved quality and timeliness of information. Utilities are planing and installing more fully integrated information flow across their business and technical systems to improve the quality of the information available for these short-term analyses. This paper addresses the need for sharing information both within and outside the utility, the benefits that are being derived from shared information, and some current implementation strategies being considered. A summary of associated industry activities is provided in an effort to provide the audience avenues for staying abreast in this rapid-paced still-developing information exchange arena.