Is Augmented Reality the New Reality for Utilities Industry?

Introduction: Last decade has been the decade of technology disruptions. Although utilities have never been early adopters of trending or latest technologies, but off lately it too has adapted to the technology disruptions in many areas. Few of the technologies which utilities are significantly applying in their day to day operations are IoT, Big Data, Cloud computing, Mobility, Digital transformation and latest being the adoption of Augmented Reality.

What is Augmented Reality (AR)? AR in layman terms can be defined as a technology that provides an interactive experience of a real-world environment by superimposing a computer-generated display on a User's view along with sound, text, video, graphics and GPS data to enhance User's real-world experience. The primary value of AR is to bring components of the digital world into a person's perception of the real world through the integration of immersive sensations that are perceived as natural parts of an environment. There are few variants of AR - Virtual Reality, Assisted Reality & Mixed Reality.

a) Virtual Reality (VR) helps in immersing the user in a multimedia/computer-simulated reality that simulates a physical presence in the real world or an imagined world, allowing the user to interact with that world like in modern-day gaming systems. VR interactions can revolutionize training. Classrooms and books will continue to provide benefits, but hands-on training without the hazards promises to serve myriad industry verticals.

b) Assisted Reality refers to any technology that allows a person to view a screen within his or her immediate field of vision, hands free. It differs from AR in that the information on the screen is not overlaid onto a physical environment.

c) Mixed Reality (MR) also referred to as hybrid reality, is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. It takes VR concept to another level, where training is specific to an actual environment rather than an idealized one.

Relevance of AR in Utility Industry: Utility industry needs to maintain, repair and build a massive infrastructure related to Electricity or Gas or Water. But majority of associated equipment’s are expensive, complicated and sometimes quite old. Operational point of view it is very important for Utility companies to keep critical assets running and functioning efficiently. Challenges are not limited to catastrophic failures but also to ensure Safety, Compliance and proper knowledge of skills. As per a study, Utility companies in UK create more than 1.5 million street holes on an average each year, often causing damage to third-party assets. Damage can be expensive, dangerous and seriously impacting the company’s reputation. These damages are affecting British economy by 5.5 billion Euros annually. Another example could be of Water pipes in Oakland, CA where average water pipe is 80 years old while some pipes dating back to 1880s. Suppose there is an earthquake and as a result hundreds of pipes break. In such a scenario, the field engineer must first identify, access the affected sites and decide which pipes to repair first so that he can direct his crew accordingly. In such critical times, he would need quick assistance to limit the damage and water loss. These are few examples where AR would be very handy.

Safety is a dominant theme for energy and utilities. Utility workforce must sometimes work in difficult terrains and hazardous environments. Such environments have the strongest need for worker safety. Real-time environment monitoring, safety notifications, and workflow instruction can ensure safety while improving efficiency. AR helps make workers safer, by embedding safety warnings, cautions, and other safety information into an application they can train on or take to the field for maintenance.

Utility industry needs specialized skills, but today the industry is facing shortage of skilled workers and an aging workforce which may result in a tremendous knowledge loss going ahead. Therefore, many of the Utility companies are exploring AR technology to connect to field workers with remote experts for immediate guidance and instructions. AR may address the challenge of an aging, retiring utility workforce facilitating the preservation of institutional knowledge.

Use Cases: a) Outages - Field crew may receive outage notification from various sources and in different forms. Once received, field technician must assess the damage and expedite repairs. Imagine a field technician with a mobile tablet using the camera or video function to capture images of damaged equipment. Using AR, the field technician would quickly get the details like asset type, its product number, maintenance history and so forth to streamline ordering replacements. The field technician can then immediately order the correct parts and mobilize the crew with the specific skills needed for repair work. That simple act will expedite repairs and restoration much faster than a manual response done today. During storms and emergency situations, there are several utilities who still have to go through the cumbersome processes where field crews continue to work with multiple hand-offs of information, often with handwritten notes on damaged poles, transformers and more. AR allows hands-free data recording using natural voice commands to detail the damage including data, pictures, videos, etc. using an AR headset, thereby significantly improving the productivity of the worker while also accelerating the pace of restoration.

b) Expertise - With the number of diverse devices (Old & New) being part of Utilities infrastructure these days, it is nearly impossible for anyone to knowledge, experience or access to data that he or she needs. With AR, a field technician can don a pair of AR glasses at the job site and have at their fingertips every piece of information necessary to perform the task. In some instances, they can connect live to a remote Subject Matter Expert to help walk them through complex & unknown issues. Leveraging AR, the field technician can collaborate with other technicians to overcome any issue which requires interaction and communication to complete the job, without losing time.

c) Geo-fencing & Safety: Field technicians these days are wearing geofencing-enabled sensors that continuously track their location and health. Wearables monitor and log an employee's health (heart rate and body temperature,) location, and external environment (temperature, radiation, toxicity) to provide real-time data & safety metrics and alert necessary individuals if there are any concerns. Smart wristbands with built-in voltage detection can alert workers when they’re close to a dangerous line. Similarly, wearable voltage and load sensors can be used to isolate outages and pinpoint power-quality issues from distributed resources into the grid. Wearable heat sensors can be used to identify hot spots in devices in the field. Wearable technology and geolocation improve safety in the field or at a plant by ensuring that technician on the job site are staying in safe locations.

d) Training: AR can replace classroom trainings and provide virtual & simulated training sessions On-demand thereby enhancing User experience and lowering costs. Virtual reality enables the delivery of realistic dangerous scenario trainings to test safety & compliance protocols and improve safety procedure execution in the event of an emergency safety incident.

e) Visual inspection of vegetation: Utilities are required to control and remove vegetation on their transmission and distribution lines. Several methods are deployed to control and remove vegetation in a safe and environmentally conscious manner in order to avoid interruptions or outages in service. It is a proven practice to collect and monitor the vegetation clearance on the field using mobile apps and integrated geospatial information. Using heads-up devices, the field technician can access the historical information on the go as well as collect data hands-free, through the voice-based interface. The technicians can take smarter decisions on the field resulting in improved operational efficiency and productivity.

f) Construction or laying of new connection of underground gas/ water pipeline: While replacing an underground gas/water pipeline or providing a new connection, it is critical to accurately locate assets and perform tasks like excavation and other maintenance activities safely. Using AR, the information about the underground pipeline and the connected assets can be shown using a 3D model with accurate GPS locations. Field technicians can identify an asset visually through rendering (shape and color of the asset), look up last repair or replacement history and get the necessary insights, avoiding any hurdles or rework, and thereby improving the job quality.

g) Asset Inspection: Field Technicians can use AR glasses to perform inspections faster by eliminating the need to switch between the job and paper-based information or tablets. Field technicians can also inspect the asset via VR Drone.

There are many other Use Cases where AR can be effectively used like in Asset Management, Asset Modeling, Workforce management, etc. With advancements in new sources of data relevant to AR for field technicians are being explored, refined and tied into such a system. One source is consumers/customers and their mobile devices, which have camera and video capabilities and social media-based means to share the results. Notifying the utility of an outage and damaged assets has become easier. A tweet or text message with a photo or video of a damaged asset may well preclude even a site visit by a utility’s field crews. Another source is the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and its context, the unmanned aerial system (UAS), which describes the related technologies such as the UAV’s sensors, communication capabilities and on-the-ground or remote pilots. UAVs/UASs can produce visual, GPS, infrared LiDar, PhoDar and other data for subsequent processing and actionable insights.

Global Initiatives: The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has taken some good initiatives to study the use of AR in Utilities industry. EPRI has teamed up with New York utility Con Edison to explore wearable technology as a solution to help employees in the field with tasks such as locating buried transmission infrastructure in despair & applying the fix. EPRI is working on a Proof of Concept along with New York Power Authority on the use of wearables for health monitoring. EPRI has also collaborated with Duke Energy, deploying Atheer’s AR platform to demonstrate the AR application benefits of improved productivity and safety. EPRI has not limited itself to American utilities but has also collaborated with Utility companies like EDF Energy, Korean Electric Power Corporation, etc. Many AR devices manufacturing firms are making huge investments in AR such as Atheer, DAQRI, Google, Microsoft, ODG, Magic Leap and others. These companies are developing AR sunglasses, helmets, Head Mounted Devices (HMD), Heads Up Displays (HUD), Holographic displays, Smart glasses, etc. Fife College in Scotland has installed a Virtual Reality System in its Lab. The Immersive Hybrid Reality lab is aimed to enhance the training and development of offshore wind turbine technicians, allowing students to conduct detailed inspections of the top and interior of a virtual 7MW offshore wind turbine, based on the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult’s Levenmouth demonstration turbine. In France, in a novel use case Enedis is employing AR and virtual reality to promote the Nice Smart Valley project in a new showroom for the public.

LARA (LBS Augmented Reality Assistive System): In Europe a consortium of six (6) countries have started the LARA initiative for utilities. The LARA system is a handheld, low-cost mobile device that enables field workers to ‘see beneath the ground’. The device brings together Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology, 3D geographic information system (GIS) technology and geospatial databases with computer graphics and AR to render complex 3D models of underground networks including water, gas, sewerage and electricity. GNSS technology includes Galileo (Europe's Satellite Navigation System) and EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) as well as GPS. Galileo will be a civil-controlled system offering guaranteed continuity of coverage. Galileo’s full operational constellation will consist of 24 operational satellites plus six spares circling Earth in three circular medium-Earth orbits, at an altitude of 23222 km. Galileo will be interoperable with the US GPS and Russian Glonass systems, offering enhanced combined performance. EGNOS is operation since 2009 and is an overlay system based on a network of ground stations and three geostationary satellites. Being able to identify underground utilities located in an excavation area prior to conducting the work is a game changer for public and private utility companies. Precise intervention will reduce the overall maintenance cost, at the same time minimizing the economic and social implications of lengthy surface works. The latter include unnecessary traffic congestion, pedestrian disruption, material wastage, use of people’s time, increased energy demand, visual intrusion and noise.

Market Size/ Opportunity: As per many research agencies, Energy & Utilities rank among the top three (3) industries for AR. Studies have shown that Energy & Utilities sector accounted around 17% of the global smart glasses shipments in 2018. Looking at the stellar growth of AR, researchers believe that AR market will grow to $18-20 billion by year 2022 for Utilities and to $200 billion by 2025 for all the industries put together.

Conclusion: There are many examples of AR technology existing in the market like Robotics or Pokémon Go game where users can interact with this technology or Superbowl match where spectators are presented with an opportunity to use an AR mobile app to play, compete and have fun. But surprisingly it got the imagination of many in the industry in last couple of years.

AR can act as complementary tool for functions involved in Utilities industry. While compelling use cases for the utility environment are in their early stages, three key applications resonate across all the companies in Utilities business i.e., Enhance field workers performance, enhance outage restoration capabilities and Ensure Safety at highest standards. Further, real-time intelligence will reduce system down time, increase worker safety and increase overall customer satisfaction. With AR employees become more proficient and quick.AR systems are flexible and can operate with mobile devices, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)/unmanned aerial system (UAS) along with UAV’s sensors, communication capabilities and on-the-ground or remote pilots. Internet of Things (IoT) can also play its role by putting together disparate devices, networks and databases to provide data-driven insights on continuous basis.

Any emerging technology face challenges in its adolescent period. AR is not different, right from wearable hardware designs to proprietary software’s, need for interoperability to affordable costs and real time situations to scalability. Inspite of all the challenges, AR technology has the promise to lower costs and broaden the types of services provided in staid industries like Utilities.

Disclaimer: The article is the independent opinion of the author and does not represent views of any organization