WeatherBug has launched WeatherBug Smart Grid Solutions, a comprehensive suite of applications using real-time, hyper-local weather intelligence to enable increased efficiencies across smart grids and electric utilities.
As the number-one external variable affecting the power industry, weather touches all aspects of the smart grid. Incorporating applications that provide accurate weather monitoring and forecasting can help electric utilities manage outages, improve work crew safety, facilitate load shifting, and reduce peak demand with minimal impact to customers. WeatherBug Smart Grid Solutions provides power companies with a suite of products featuring advanced weather technology, monitoring capabilities and forecasting intelligence. The real-time information provided by WeatherBug Smart Grid Solutions enable the following:
- Load Balancing and Demand Forecasting: Integrating live, hyper-local information from points within the service area improves load balancing and enables accurate demand forecasting. Additional WeatherBug monitoring stations can be deployed at locations throughout the service area, improving weather visibility at critical asset locations.
- Demand Response: WeatherBug EcoResponse is a next-generation demand response program that combines live weather information and sophisticated algorithms to provide real-time insight and analysis for peak-demand reduction and load shifting through customer opt-in activity.
- Consumer Engagement: The WeatherBug EcoConnect portal is an educational energy resource portal integrating real-time weather, energy consumption information, home energy audit information and energy smart tips to engage consumers in demand response programs - reducing costs for both the utility and consumer.
- Outage Management: Improve situational decision making with real-time weather information to correlate outages with defined weather thresholds, gauge storm severity during severe weather events, and deploy crews more safely and efficiently. In addition, the WeatherBug Total Lightning Network provides both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning detection, providing detailed, advance severe storm warning capabilities for crew safety and asset protection.
- Grid Visualization/GIS: Comprehensive GIS and API weather data feeds from WeatherBug integrate observational and historical weather information, enabling precise grid visualization to protect key assets, improving mitigation of outages and service disruptions, and enhancing transmission throughput.
- Real-Time Energy Markets: Energy traders utilize the WeatherBug StreamerRT tool, which enables detailed views of weather on multiple layers, for simple, easy access to real-time weather - making it possible to monitor and react to conditions impacting demand shifts and pricing.
