AGL Energy generates energy from thermal power, natural gas, wind power, hydroelectricity, solar energy, gas storage, and coal. In recent years, the company has seen massive growth—from supplying 300 megawatts of electricity in 2005 to 5,500 MW in 2012. But with the growth of acquisitions and renewable adoption, the company has also seen massive growth in its data. Using AVEVA PI System and AVEVA Data Hub, AGL centralized its data so teams across the organization as well as external partners have easy, secure access to real-time information. In a pilot study with four of AGL’s external partners, cloud-based data sharing in AVEVA Data Hub greatly reduced the time AGL spent generating reports for partners.
“What came along was a solution that really fit what we needed, and that was [AVEVA PI System]. It could connect to any one of our controllers. We could harvest every piece of real-time data and make it available to every person at AGL.”
–David Bartolo, Head of Asset Performance, AGL
“AGL Energy is excited to be leveraging AVEVA Data Hub to deliver a new standard in collaboration and real-time data transparency within our renewable utility network. Newfound insights into energy and power generation are helping us enhance site efficiency and asset utilization, while mitigating costs and potential critical outages. We anticipate significant in-person savings in the first year and look forward to leveraging our competitive advantage to provide similar value to our diverse power generation portfolio.”
–David Bartolo, Head of Asset Performance, AGL
Goals
- Give teams across the organization access to real-time data
- Expand from real-time awareness to predictive modeling
- Share power generation data securely with partners, optimizing usage across distributed power generation sites
Challenges
- Company growth presented challenges to managing data systems
- Legacy systems couldn’t access real-time data or support predictive analytics
- Partner sites required enhanced collaboration and visibility
Solutions
Results
- In just three years, AGL saved $18.7M AUD in reduced forced outages and optimized maintenance
- Avoided an outage that would have cost $50-70M AUD
- Real-time data sharing with partners reduced time generating reports, saving an estimated 35,000 AUD in annual AGL worker hours
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