Utilities Test Drive Analytics from Oracle to Manage Influx of Electric Vehicles

The use of electric vehicles (EVs) is growing at a record rate, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicting that the number of electric cars on the road will rise from 3.1 million in 2017 to 125 million in 2030. Enabling utilities to intelligently manage this new energy demand on the power grid, Oracle Utilities has unveiled a breakthrough in EV detection.

Tapping deep machine learning, Oracle Utilities Analytics Insights is able to identify the presence of an EV, show the time and frequency of charging and disaggregate the energy being consumed by the vehicle with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) data. With this intelligence, utilities can reliably plan for the energy infusion needed to power EVs at scale and engage customers to charge at the times that are the least expensive for them and best for the health of the energy grid. The new EV detection capabilities from Oracle Utilities Analytics Insights are currently being piloted by a number of utilities.

“With solar, wind and storage technologies now constituting 90 percent of investment interest, the road is paved for deeper decarbonization of the electricity sector,” said Ben Kellison, director grid research, Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. “The case for transport electrification has never been stronger and the rapid growth in investment interest from car manufacturers is a confirmation of the future consumer demand for EVs. Utilities are now faced with an increasingly clean and decentralized system and they need new data and analytic packages to support a new planning paradigm.” 

Impact of the EV Explosion on the Energy Grid

The influx of EVs could represent an average additional growth of 1-4 percent in peak load on the grid over the next few decades, according to a report by McKinsey. While this may seem modest, the impact will be highly volatile and cause unpredictable spikes at the local sub-station and feeder levels in residential areas. This load is projected to reach as high as 30 percent peak growth in certain urban areas that are hotspots for EV adoption.

While this transportation development represents an important step forward in reducing carbon emissions, most electricity grids were created long before EVs were a commercially viable consumer product. As transportation continues to evolve from gas to the grid, utilities must plan for an uptick in energy demand that will vary dramatically by area. 

“With almost every major auto manufacturer releasing new EV models in the coming years, the window of time for utilities to act is closing,” said Dan Byrnes, SVP of product development, Oracle Utilities. “The intelligence our analytics provide is essential for utilities to make needed assessments on grid investments and in tandem, work as trusted advisors to customers who may be in the dark as to how owning an EV is impacting their energy footprint and bill. From utility optimization to proven customer engagement, only Oracle offers a complete package to manage the explosion of EVs.”

Powering Better EV Planning and Engagement

The Oracle EV detection capabilities are powered by more than a decade of research and experience disaggregating household energy data from billions of data points collected from 60 million households across 100 utilities. Oracle’s trained data models can be deployed for each specific household’s usage to understand whether a customer has an EV, how they interact with their EV chargers, and where EVs are clustering on the distribution grid. As such, utilities will be able to better plan for and manage the operational impact of EVs as a new distributed energy resource (DER) on the grid.

From a customer perspective, charging an EV can increase a typical household’s energy usage by 15 percent or more and potentially double usage during peak demand times. With the offering, utilities will have the tools to roll-out intuitive, user-friendly EV adoption customer journeys and time-of-use (TOU) plans to engage, educate and reward owners for charging during non-peak times. In the future, these same kinds of engagement programs can also be used for utilities to buy-back unused energy from their customers’ EV batteries to help balance energy supply and demand in times of need.

“EVs will have an impact on every part of a utility’s operations—from grid stability and regulatory affairs to customer billing and engagement,” added Byrnes. “With Oracle, our customers have the tools and intelligence they need to make better decisions, maximize outcomes, and increase customer satisfaction every step of the journey.”

Oracle Applies Cutting-Edge Tech to Enhance Fan Experiences

Applying cloud computing, analytics, and machine learning to reams of data can modernize age-old activities like taking in a baseball game, watching a sailboat race,—or tracking product inventories—Oracle executives say.

Oracle execs and officials from the SailGP yacht race series gathered at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Yacht Club for Oracle Media Days to talk about how technology can make work and leisure activities better

Inside Oracle’s AI and Emerging Tech Strategy and Innovations

The Palma, Majorca-based Melia resort chain is rolling out a waterproof bracelet embedded with an NFC chip that lets guests unlock their rooms, order cocktails, book massages within the resort and buy things outside the property without a wallet or credit card.

Working with Melia, Oracle engineers came up with nearly two dozen possible uses for such a device in days. A first test of the bracelet, run in Majorca, went well and now the system is going live elsewhere, said Neil Sholay, vice president, Digital Innovation, Oracle.

Sholay’s “co-innovation teams”—comprised of developers, digital designers, business modelers, and consultants—work with customers on a real business problem that they have struggled to solve. “In 10 weeks, we’ll take that challenge, find ideas, build prototypes, validate it with client data, and then get it into execution,” Sholay said.

The idea of a smart “wearable” is to give consumers what they want without hassle and for the business to gain access—with customer opt-in—to useful information.

The availability of data and great ways to use it are obviously valuable in less exotic workplaces as well. Smart companies want to wring more out of their own “first-party” data, and relish the idea of making better use of that data to cut costs and grow revenue.

“We are focused on embedding machine learning in our business applications,” said Melissa Boxer, vice president of Adaptive Intelligence Applications for Oracle. 

These applications come “ready to go, with pre-tuned data models, what you need to feed the business requirement whether it’s next-best-action for a salesperson or expense auditing,” Boxer said.

By integrating machine learning into commonly used business applications customers can take advantage of the technology in a familiar context with the data they already have. They don’t necessarily need to know that machine learning is even in there.

In addition to helping organizations get the most out of their own data, Oracle provides “third party data” from other sources that can enrich their customer’s applications with context from the real world.

The combination of internal data with contextual “signals” about what’s happening at a company—credit rating changes or new product launches—can help businesses “better categorize suppliers and understand which might be the best to work with,” Boxer said.

Oracle’s Commitment to Sports, Fan Experience and Technology Innovation

Most people go to sporting events to see what’s happening on the field. Any time they spend standing in line trying to buy food or drinks, detracts from that goal.

This is not a trivial problem. A ticket holder who doesn’t buy food equates to lost revenue for the venue, and less fun for the fan.

A recent survey found that most sports enthusiasts will embrace things that make it easier to get food and drinks although they don’t want to be distracted by the technology.

“Fans want convenience of mobile payments and kiosks but they don’t want tech for tech’s sake,” said Simon de Montfort Walker, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle’s Food and Beverage Global Business Unit

Collecting data about stadium traffic flow helps alleviate soul-sapping congestion. A computer vision system that sees where lines are shortest can push alerts to redirect people thus alleviating long waits at food stands and restrooms.

SailGP: Powered by technology Innovation

Racing space-age yachts in San Francisco Bay (or anywhere) presents its own set of technological and athletic hurdles. SailGP catamarans are the fastest boats in the world, capable of reaching speeds of up to 50 knots (or 60 mph on land), said Sir Russell Coutts, CEO of SailGP and five-time Americas Cup Winner.

Hans Henken, flight controller for the USA SailGP Team, described the experience for those who’ve never raced:

“It’s like driving your car down the freeway with the top down in the pouring rain. The exit is coming up fast, you change lanes and find your traction controls are off, you slam on the brakes and the brakes are out. You have to make quick decisions in a lot of spray, and it’s very, very noisy.”

In SailGP races, all of the boats are built to the same specifications, meaning that any edge the crew can get from 1,200 embedded sensors could be the difference between victory and defeat.

Sensor data is sent to the Oracle cloud in 200 msec, less time than the time it takes to blink, said Edwin Upson, Oracle group vice president of Enterprise Cloud Architects. Then it is returned to the crew for analysis in near-real-time.

Sailors on the boat and off-boat crews parse the data, plus audio and video from shipboard cameras, to adjust to changing conditions.

The same technology will help spectators track action on their tablets with a live TV feed and information about boat location and performance. “You can customize your view, zoom in and out, change which boat you’re tracking and change the camera view on a given boat,” Upson said.

Oracle sees opportunity in the intersection of technology and sports, an area Judy Sim, chief of staff and senior vice president of marketing calls “fast entertainment.”