BC HYDRO. Reducing revenue loss with advanced theft detection and energy analytics ESSENTIALS SMART METERING & INFRASTRUCTURE

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1 BC HYDRO Reducing revenue loss with advanced theft detection and energy analytics ESSENTIALS Challenge Detect electricity theft sooner and on a larger scale to reduce revenue loss EMC Solutions and Services Big Data & Analytics consulting services Pivotal Greenplum Database Pivotal Hadoop Pivotal Database Computing Appliance EMC Data Domain Results 80 percent of leads actioned identified theft, unmetered consumption, or error in company data dramatically improving detection while reducing field investigation of unqualified leads Program payback in less than 12 months Expected to prevent CAD$700+ million in revenue loss over 20 years Reduced rate burden on legitate customers BC Hydro is an electric utility serving 1.9 million customers across a terrain of a million square kilometers in British Columbia, Canada. For more than 50 years, it has delivered clean, safe, reliable power, while maintaining among the lowest rates in North America. Today BC Hydro sources more than 90 percent of its electricity from hydropower. Electricity theft was a growing problem for BC Hydro and its legitimate customers. In addition to the safety hazards posed to employees and the public, annual revenue loss was estimated at CAD$100 million and increasing at a rate of percent per year. On the front lines, the BC Hydro revenue assurance team did its best, but was constrained by manual processes, multiple isolated data sets, and the need for extensive field work, which made detecting theft difficult, costly, and time-consuming. The utility recognized that it needed a new kind of large-scale, automated, data- and analytics-driven approach to be able to reduce losses by an order of magnitude. SMART METERING & INFRASTRUCTURE In 2007, BC Hydro kicked off a Smart Metering & Infrastructure (SMI) program as a first step in enabling better theft detection, as well as to provide the foundation for new energy management and customer services. By 2012, BC Hydro had achieved an industry-leading transformation, replacing residential and commercial meters with smart devices across the Province an area the size of Washington, Oregon, and California combined. Connected via IPv6 protocols into a single telecommunications network with new Data Collection and Meter Data Management systems, the smart infrastructure began generating 25 terabytes of data a year. The next challenge was to develop the business analytics to make this data actionable, says Elizabeth Fletcher, who served initially as the SMI program Finance Lead and today is the SMI Deputy Director, responsible for the overall program execution and project completion. CUSTOMER PROFILE

2 While the utility envisioned a full suite of advanced energy analytics applications, its first priority was a theft detection solution that could automate data discovery, apply complex calculations, and present the results geospatially. We needed a partner with advanced analytical, data visualization, and modeling capabilities to help us develop the application, says Fletcher. We wanted proven technology that would scale and support uses beyond theft detection. Security, privacy, and support for the integration of multiple data sources and data types, with technologies such as Hadoop, were key requirements. Energy theft is an issue for utilities globally. The Energy Analytics Solution with energy balancing is groundbreaking in the capabilities it delivers. Moving forward, BC Hydro will continue to partner with EMC to improve EAS, as well as to help make it a repeatable industry solution, opening new possibilities for interutility coordination. Elizabeth Fletcher, Smart Metering & Infrastructure Deputy Director After an extensive review process, the utility selected EMC to help it integrate data from multiple sources, design and develop analytics, and deploy and configure the Energy Analytics Solution (EAS) on the EMC Pivotal Greenplum Database platform with Pivotal Hadoop. EMC s proposal was the best fit across all of our requirements, says Fletcher. ENERGY ANALYTICS SOLUTION The EAS development and delivery team incorporated a broad and varied range of experience and expertise from statistics, mathematics, and computer development, to engineering and field investigation. In all, more than 50 people worked on the team, which included BC Hydro subject matter experts, EMC consultants, and contract resources working directly for the utility. A technical architect from EMC provided the overall skills and expertise to architect and design the EAS footprint. A smart metering analytics principal worked with BC Hydro subject matter experts to ensure that both BC Hydro and EMC-developed analytical approaches and specific algorithms were incorporated into the EAS solution and product roadmap. The team fostered a badge-less culture, which allowed issues to be surfaced quickly and resolved collectively, says Fletcher. EMC team members continually went the extra mile to ensure that project requirements and deadlines were met. In less than a year, BC Hydro was using the first release of EAS that combined the fundamental building blocks of data integration, analytics, and visualization to enable faster, more efficient, and accurate theft detection.

3 Today, with the second release of the solution, EAS capabilities span: Data Integration Information is collected from smart grid devices including customer meters, SCADA-enabled grid monitoring and control devices and check meters and integrated with data from enterprise systems in a Hadoop data lake to provide a single, robust data set. Operationalized Analytics A variety of highly specialized meter and transformer analytics automatically detect energy anomalies. The algorithms output a number of measures and indicators daily to help prioritize investigative work. Individual scores are rolled into a composite score that is color-coded throughout the system to help with the quick identification of assets meriting analysis and investigation. Visualization A base map interface shows the entire transmission and distribution network, with layers related to investigations, customer account information, work orders, and data from the GIS connectivity model. Information is refreshed regularly, with a frequency ranging from 15 minutes to nightly, depending on the source of the data. By simply selecting an icon on the map, analysts can drill down to view all information about an asset, including voltage consumption, meter details, and more. Coupled with dynamic dashboards with built-in search and filter capabilities, the visual interface makes information on all BC Hydro assets readily available in just a few keystrokes. EAS runs on the EMC Pivotal Greenplum Database platform on Pivotal Data Computing Appliances (DCAs) with a Pivotal Hadoop data lake. The Pivotal Greenplum data is backed up to EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems. In addition to EMC technologies, EAS integrates components from SAS Analytics, Space Time Insight, Google Earth, and Informatica. A sandbox Greenplum environment supports continual refinement of algorithms and advanced analytics, particularly as new use cases and data sources are added. Since its initial release, EAS has also been integrated with an SAPbased investigative case management application and field investigation tool. Field personnel can access the application via an ipad interface to interrogate revenue meters in the field and obtain on-demand readings of billed consumption. EAS functionality has also been extended to detect and automatically correct for errors in network topology in the corporate geographic information system (GIS) for ever-better data quality. PAYBACK IN LESS THAN 12 MONTHS Before EAS, most investigations were based on tips from the public and anomalies discovered via manual field work, says Fletcher. Now, revenue assurance analysts and field investigators work on one system with dashboards that visually present the data needed to review, triage, and investigate automatically generated, high-quality leads.

4 In addition to reducing revenue loss through better, faster detection, the solution has nearly eliminated the field investigation of unqualified leads. Safety improvements include faster detection of potential electric hazards, reduced windshield driving along power lines, and access to safety warnings and other information during tasks, such as disconnect execution. To date, more than 80 percent of the leads actioned have identified theft, unmetered consumption, or errors in company data. Feedback from users including field investigators, electricians, analysts, and collections personnel has been overwhelmingly positive, with all types of users validating that their work process has become more efficient, effective, or streamlined with EAS. The system is expected to deter CAD$732 million in revenue loss through earlier detection of stolen electricity over a 20-year time horizon. So far, benefit realization is ahead of what the business case expected would be achieved by this point, says Fletcher. We will more than cover the cost for theft detection program in less than 12 months. ENERGY BALANCING Today BC Hydro and the EMC teams are working on the final planned release of EAS, which will enable full energy balancing. Scheduled for release later this year, the solution will compare total energy input and output from energy inputs at the feeder level, to total smart meter consumption, plus the technical loss modeled for all devices. We will be able to account for every electron generated, transmitted, and distributed across the BC Hydro network the first application of this kind to be used by any utility company in North America, says Fletcher. As a result, we will be able to reduce energy waste through both technical loss and theft, improving service while helping to keep rates low for our customers. The data lake built to support EAS is fast becoming an enterprisewide resource for use cases ranging from incorporating public data sources for load forecasting and outage identification, to optimizing distribution system planning, operational efficiency, and maintenance. As potential users line up to be the next to take a plunge into the data lake, we are learning that governance is as critical as technology, says Fletcher. While the lines of business drive the use cases, strict governance is required to define, document, and secure data, ensure privacy, identify data owners and stewards, and measure data quality. Having the data is not enough you need to make it actionable. INTER-UTILITY OPPORTUNITIES EMC has been a valued partner in the development of the EAS application. EMC technology and expertise were essential in delivering the application now deployed, says Fletcher. Moving forward, BC Hydro will continue to partner with EMC to improve, and reinvest to fund new capabilities of EAS as well as

5 help EAS become a repeatable industry solution, opening new possibilities for inter-utility coordination. Energy theft is an issue for utilities globally, says Fletcher. EAS is groundbreaking in the capabilities it delivers. With EAS, BC Hydro has taken significant, pragmatic steps toward realizing the industry vision of the Smart Grid. It is well-positioned to begin to use data and analytics to revolutionize its relationship with customers; for example, by offering greater choice and control through optional in-home feedback and demand-management tools. These capabilities are critical for new models of distributed smallscale, clean electricity generation, including customer-generation and micro-grids, which will help to meet new energy demands, such as electric vehicle charging. CONTACT US To learn more about how EMC products, services, and solutions can help solve your business and IT challenges, contact your local representative or authorized reseller, visit and explore and compare products in the EMC Store. EMC 2, EMC, the EMC logo, Data Domain, Greenplum, Pivotal, and Isilon are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. Copyright 2015 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 11/15 Customer Profile H EMC believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.