The fundamental charter of electric and gas utilities has not changed for decades: provide reliable, affordable, clean energy to its consumers – residential as well as commercial. Yet, far from being a boring stagnant business, utilities have squarely been in the middle of almost every significant technology advance in the last 2 decades. From photo voltaic (PV) aka roof top Solar to Electric Vehicles (EV), to crypto mining, to GenAI and artificial intelligence in general. Not to mention the constant pressure of improving operational safety in the face of unprecedented wildfires and the push to provide clean environmentally friendly energy.

The IT systems of a utility have been challenged to transform at ever increasing pace to address these demands. They have responded by rolling out smart metering solutions that measure usage in 15-minute increments rather than once per month. This was essential to manage the birth of the prosumer - a customer that consumes as well as produces energy. Further PVs generate energy during the hottest part of the day which is also the time of greatest demand and EVs consume massive amounts of electricity, but they do so typically during overnight hours. This has a beneficial effect of smoothing out the demand curve, providing clean energy, and driving down costs by obviating the need for massive transmission and distribution investment. The crypto and AI waves have increased demand for electricity to never before seen levels leading to significant investment in nuclear energy in decades and at the same time ushering in the era of large companies attempting to own energy generation plants.  

The commonality in all these IT transformations is an explosion of data and often “bad data”. That is where SNP, a leading software provider for digital transformation, automated data migration and data management in SAP environments. Its new Kyano platform built on 3+ decades of experience encapsulates utility industry specific data models, transformation objects, and bespoke mappings that have a deep understanding of SAP ECC and SAP S/4 HANA solutions for the Utility industry. This allows SNP and its partners deliver a solution that can be implemented quickly at reasonable costs while simultaneously reducing risk.