GigaOM » Space-Time Insight

Using a tweet to get the power back on faster

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:48:23 +0000

Your power just died — what’s the first thing you do? No, not go get candles. If you’re like many of us, you probably grab your phone and tweet, or write a Facebook message, about how supremely annoying and inconvenient losing power is (ugh, you were in the middle of Downton Abbey!). But turns out, bitching publicly on social media could actually be helpful to your local utility, if they’re using new big data software recently launched by GE.

This week at Distributech — it’s like the CES for the power grid sector — GE is formally unveiling its big data analytics and visualization software called Grid IQ Insight. It sucks in data from everywhere — grid sensors, smart meters, weather reports — including public social media data that consumers write about their electricity. The analytics can find and determine if the data is relevant (“My power’s been out for an hour, PG&E sucks!”) and can use the location data from the phone tweet to get a picture of an outage in a certain area.

The idea is to give utilities a better window into when outages occur before they start getting phone calls from angry customers. They’ll still get those, but if they see an explosion of social media messages coming from a certain neighborhood, they can potentially reach out to those customers first and let them know they’re working on the problem. It’s about better customer service and quicker fixes to power outages.

During a demo on Monday night, GE execs showed a demo of a visualization of a grid in a neighborhood and tweets that would come into the system in real time. The social media messages were coded — red for negative, blue for neutral and green for positive. ‘They’re usually red,” joked a GE exec.

The grid visualization can show all sorts of other data in real time, not just social media messages. Importantly utility workers can see when connected grid systems like substations and transformers are having problems. The big data analytics platform uses Cassandra and MySQL databases under the hood.

GE isn’t the first to do this. A startup called Space Time Insight has built a grid data visualization tool that organizations like the California Independent System Operator Corporation use to watch California’s grid in real time. For Distributech — or DTech as the industry likes to call it — Space Time Insight launched the latest version of its software and also announced Canadian utility Hydro One as a new customer.

Developing tools to help utilities manage the massive influx of big data from the power grid is a hot space. (Make sure to check out our 13 energy data startups to watch in 2013). GE’s big data software is also part of its efforts to sell technology for the “Industrial Internet,” or bringing digital technologies to the sectors like transportation, aviation, locomotives, power generation, oil and gas development, and other industrial processes.

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13 energy data startups to watch in 2013

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 08:00:50 +0000

Dozens of startups building analytics that can collect and analyze energy data emerged or grew their businesses in 2012. It was a hot trend for a variety of reasons including the development of big data technologies as a massive and growing business, the notion that energy analytics are a more attractive capital-lite business than smart grid hardware, and the reality that utilities need to digitize their power grids to provide better service in the modern age.

Here’s a list of 13 startups that we covered last year that I would keep an eye on in 2013. A couple of these, like Opower and Nest, I also included on my list last year:

1). Stem: Formerly called Powergetics and founded in 2009, Stem‘s software tracks and analyzes energy use in buildings and helps companies predict and control their energy budgets. In addition, the company helps buildings owners tap into installed battery farms to use stored energy when grid electricity is expensive. The company got a new CEO and announced its first customer — InterContinental Hotels — in San Francisco in 2012.

2). Opower: I’ve covered these energy software leaders closely, so I won’t rehash them here. But in 2012 the company made strides like launching smart thermostat utility software trials with Honeywell, and it helped customers collectively save 2 terawatt hours of energy by the end of last year.

Honeywell & Opower’s iPad smart thermostat app

3). AutoGrid: A newbie launched by some progressive former utility execs at PG&E, AutoGrid is working on an Amazon-style recommendation engine for utilities’ energy data. Its Energy Data Platform (EDP) can take petabytes of grid data — both structured and unstructured — and crunches it to predict and analyze what is happening on the grid in real time. The company is backed by Foundation Capital, Voyager Capital and Stanford University.

4). Nest: While most people think of Nest as a smart thermostat maker company, some of the startup’s powerful innovations are the analytics that collect energy data and train the thermostat to learn your habits and shave off energy when it works for you. That data will also be valuable to utilities in some respect. Nest launched its redesigned thermostat in late 2012.

5). Viridity Energy: Viridity Energy has been around for awhile, and it uses energy data to create a new type of demand response service, or the process when utilities connect with building owners to turn down a building’s energy consumption. In 2012, Viridity got a large round from Japanese giant Mitsui. (photo of Viridity Energy SVP Western Regional Division Laura Manz)

6). EcoFactor: EcoFactor is like the service version of Nest (without the designed hardware) and is working with utilities and service providers like cable companies to manage connected thermostats in real time. In late 2012, EcoFactor raised another $8 million from Aster Capital, Claremont Creek Ventures and RockPort Capital Partners.

7). Bidgely: Launched in late 2012, Bidgely has created algorithms that can dig into real-time smart meter energy-consumption data, can reduce consumers’ home energy use by between 4 percent to 12 percent, and it can also deliver other beneficial home services to consumers. The company is backed by Khosla Ventures.

8). Space-Time Insight: Fremont, Calif.-based Space-Time Insight develops geospatial analytics around sectors like electricity, oil and gas and transportation. California’s Independent System Operator deployed the company’s software to power a control room featuring an 80-foot screen that displays map views and real-time information about energy infrastructure. The company raised a series B round of $14 million last year.

9). PlotWatt: Like Bidgely, PlottWatt has developed smart algorithms that can crunch energy data down to the appliance level to determine which of your household devices is sucking up more than its fair share of power. The company is four years old but raised a series A round of $3 million from Felicis Ventures and Acorn Ventures last summer.

10). WegoWise: WegoWise is looking to lower energy costs for apartment buildings, helping both landlords and tenants. The company uses lots of data to help property managers see where their units can stand to be improved. WegoWise bought data startup Melon Power late last year.

11). Retroficiency: Retroficiency has created data analytics that basically can give a building (or a group of buildings) an energy audit remotely, without auditors having to come to the site of the building. It uses a lot of publicly and privately available data to do that. The method is a much more low cost and quicker way to plan energy building reductions.

12). GridNavigator: GridNavigator’s software and cloud-based service perform energy consumption forecasts throughout the day to help building managers manage their power consumption. The company was founded in 2009 and is based in Redmond, Wash.

13). Honest Buildings: Honest Buildings doesn’t just collect energy data, but it has created a repository for building-related data enabling renter and home buyers, property managers, and organizations to learn about and compare the energy efficiencies of buildings. It also has info about green building materials and certifications like LEED.

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Space-Time Insight raises $14M to put your data on a map

Derrick Harris — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:46:18 +0000

Space-Time Insight, a Fremont, Calif.-based provider of geospatial analytics, has raised $14 million in Series B funding to take its software mainstream. Although Space-Time has made a name for itself in the energy sector — a fact underscored by its new energy-focused investors — the company says it has value anywhere organizations have assets to protect.

We first covered Space-Time last year, when the California Independent System Operator deployed the company’s software to power a massive control room featuring an 80-foot screen that displays map views and real-time information from the ISO’s energy infrastructure. Among the ISO’s duties is managing approximately 25,000 miles of power lines, and Space-Time helps it get a view of what’s going on across all that distance.

The California ISO mission control room

However, Steve Ehrlich, Space-Time’s senior vice president of marketing, told me during a recent phone call, Space-Time is starting to see traction in other related areas such as oil & gas exploration and transportation. If organizations have critical assets that are geospatially located, he said, Space-Time can help them take in weather, social media, enterprise, and other data and correlate and visualize it “in ways they’ve never thought about before.”

Once they get started, they just keep thinking of new analyses they’d like to do. For example, Ehrlich explained, a utility might begin by trying to locate which regions are having the most problems by analyzing the general readings from its infrastructure in each area, and then drill down ever further to the point of looking at specific neighborhoods and external data associated with those neighborhoods.

Space-Time CEO Rob Schilling told me one big customer recently summed up the value of the company’s product thusly: “If you can’t see it, you can’t understand it.”

Despite the broadening interest, though, the energy sector is still “absolutely” the driving force behind Space-Time’s growth, Schilling said. The company’s new investors underscore that reality. EnerTech Capital, Novus Energy Partners and ClearSky Power & Technology Fund joined existing investors Opus Capital Ventures and Start Up Farms International in this round.

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How Google Maps is changing the face of data

Derrick Harris — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:00:51 +0000

Already incredibly useful for helping us get directions, find the nearest grocery store and find out our state capital, Google Maps is now becoming the hot way to display enterprise or organizational data that’s associated with particular places. As a data visualization method, the timing of this trend isn’t surprising. The concept of big data has opened organizations’ eyes to the value of their myriad data sources — many of which are tagged with geo-location information — and now is opening up new ways to process and display that data.

IBM’s Jeff Jonas described the importance of geospatial data at our Structure: Data conference in March, calling it “prediction super-food.” You can watch the video below to get the full (and rather entertaining) explanation, but here’s a summation: geospatial, or space-time, data adds context to the information we already have, allowing us to make better decisions. Using a puzzle analogy, lots of data without context is like a pile of puzzle pieces, but lots of data with context is like those same puzzle pieces coming together to complete the picture.

Geospatial adds an incredible amount of context. It allows for complex tasks such as tracking of people as they go about their business to help determine who’s connected to whom, or predicting where someone might go next and what’s the best route to get there. If we’re talking about a spreading disease, Jonas explained, geospatial data helps us determine its vector and velocity.

This is where Google Maps comes in, because it presents an intuitive way to visualize and consume that data. You’re not just looking at times, places and other information in text form, but you’re seeing it in relation to time and space.

Last week, for example, I covered the aptly named Space-Time Insight, whose product overlays real-time data atop Google Maps (among other interfaces). It lets customers visualize what’s happening and then act accordingly based on whatever their needs happen to be. California ISO, for example, uses Space-Time to see where wildfires are burning and determine where they’ll travel next, as well as to monitor energy prices and conditions in numerous locations and adjust the grid supply accordingly.

Wednesday, SAP announced a similar partnership with Google that lets SAP applications overlay their data on Google Maps. To demonstrate the breadth of possibilities for data-plus-maps mashups, SAP suggested a handful of possible scenarios:

A telecom operator could use Google Earth and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software to perform dropped-call analysis and pinpoint the geo-coordinates of faulty towers.

A state department of revenue could overlay household tax information on a map of the state and group it at the county level to track the highest and lowest tax bases.

A mortgage bank could perform risk assessment of its mortgage portfolio by overlaying foreclosure and default data with the location of loans on Google Maps.

With SAP StreamWork, a team of customer support representatives in a consumer packaged goods company could collaborate and pinpoint the location of consumer complaints within specific geographies and make a decision regarding how to address and prioritize resolutions.

A theme park operator could use the Google Maps API Premier and get real-time traffic information on attractions with SAP BusinessObjects solutions to send rerouting messages to customers in order to improve satisfaction rates.

U.S. census data could be overlaid on a Google map of the country, grouped by state and drilled down on at the county level.

Something tells me we’re only getting started when it comes to fusing big data, advanced analytics and next-generation displays. The truth is that we’re still a long way from mastering the capture and analysis of big data streams, which arguably are necessary steps before tackling the visualization issue. It’s difficult to even imagine how we — or our machines — will be consuming data 10 years from now considering how far we’ve come in the past few years. But we’re off to a very good start.

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How California ISO uses Google Maps, big data to manage power

Derrick Harris — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:33:16 +0000

Talk about big data: The California Independent System Operator Corporation has installed an 80-foot by 6.5-foot screen in its control room to display real-time power-grid data from thousands of endpoints. Its new system is powered by software from Space-Time Insight, whose software melds real-time geospatial data with Google Maps to give ISO employees access to the data they need in a format that’s very useful. It might be the most-cutting edge ISO control room in the world.

The problem that required such an extreme solution is the massive scale at which everything takes place in California. The ISO, for example, manages about 85 percent of California’s power load, totaling more than 286 billion kWh of energy per year across more than 25,000 miles of line. Employees are inundated with data, said Jim McIntosh, an executive director at California ISO, so they needed something that would present it to them in a useful manner.

What Space-Time Insights’ software does is present data however it will be most beneficial for that customer’s particular needs. It maps data — from wherever and whenever it’s from — in-memory for fast access, organized geospatially as well as by time. The result might be the popular map view, or it might be any number of heat maps, correlation, trending or any other number of more-classical data views. Additionally, Space-Time’s Steve Erlich told me, customers can customize the application how they see fit to create their own visualizations, functions, data workflows or other capabilities.

McIntosh says his team used to get data updates at 4-second intervals, but now it gets updates by the millisecond, and presented in a very intuitive manner that shows and tells what’s going on. He analogized the switch to the Space-Time system to making the move from x-rays to MRIs. Other ISOs that have toured the control have been very impressed, he added, because it’s likely the most state-of-the-art in North America, if not the world.

The California ISO began using Space-Time in 2008 to combat wildfires in San Diego, but now uses it for a wide variety of tasks. To combat wildfires, McIntosh explained, the ISO is able to see where wildfires are and how they might move potentially hours earlier than previously possible, which lets it manage the power supply accordingly. It can proactively move power flow off of lines that might be affected by fire to protect from a future power loss and other damage that might occur should a fire hit live power lines.

Another use case for which the new system is ideal is making sure California’s grid is using the right data source at the right time. The ISO monitors data from about 4,500 nodes to determine what energy source will be the cheapest for any given location at any given time. This is made all the more difficult because of strong California mandates around using certain percentages of renewable energy. If wind conditions pick up and make that an ideal source for a certain location, it’s the ISO’s job — in the names of both economics and compliance — to make sure that wind isn’t being wasted.

As for Space-Time Insight, which was formed in 2005 and first got funded in 2008, it’s becoming very popular with utilities worldwide, Erlich said, but it’s expanding fast. Oil and gas, transportation and other industries that derive value from advanced visualization and real-time analysis are buying its software, and the company just signed up its first new media customer. Although who it is and how it’s using the Space-Time software are still a secret.

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