I'm Sumeet Singh and I have the privilege of being PG&E's Chief Safety and Risk Officer.
We have a significant amount of infrastructure that goes around many times the distance around this world,
and we get data on the tune of eight billion to ten billion data points to operate a safe, reliable energy system every single day.
So it's critical for us to be able to understand what are those key data attributes, not just about our assets, but about how those assets are being operated.
PG&E is dealing with a massive climate threat.
Wildfires are increasing in frequency, size and intensity, and wildfire seasons are growing longer.
Foundry acts as a central hub, layering together risk models and the current grid conditions, enabling us to better understand and manage the risk.
PG&E is rolling out Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings that protect the grid and California for the entire fire season.
The way that Foundry helps with EPSS - we took advantage of this capability where it spatially recognized which conductors were traversing areas where there is fire risk.
It had the capability of electrically tracing upstream until it got to a device that had the capability to use these fast tripping Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings.
We ran that that program for the entire system.
It identified, for all 25,000 miles or so of wire that is in these high fire-risk areas, which devices needed to be enabled.
Because this is whether it's coming, whether we're ready for it or not.
We make sure that they're on as that weather comes and they're off once the weather passes.
Foundry allows us to understand the reliability impacts of the new settings and be data-driven in identifying patterns to improve the stability of the grid.
Conducting preventative maintenance is key to preventing electric equipment issues from potentially sparking a wildfire.
Foundry has been used to analyze smart meter data to develop a model that better predicts distribution transformer equipment health for preventative maintenance.
Smart meters allow us both to observe measurements of voltage and load at millions of points on the electrical grid.
And by combining the information with geospatial location and network topology, we're able to really infer a lot of information about how our systems are operating.
If we know when something is more likely to fail, we can take action.
We can prevent wildfires that are caused by powerlines.
We can keep people safe.
Historically, PG&E's data systems and warehouses were deployed to support specific capabilities and business functions and were only integrated as needed.
Foundry is our central platform for data-driven decision making and situational intelligence.
It serves as the operating system that will enable effective end-to-end asset and risk management.
In the future, Foundry will enable us to manage across the lifecycle of the grid: from scenario modeling to work planning, scheduling, executing, operating and closing.
Our job here is to manage the grid as efficiently and effectively as possible.
That includes long-term optimizations, right?
What are we going to do from a maintenance and construction standpoint?
Where are we going to underground lines?
And that includes operational things that are happening tomorrow.
So, ultimately, what we're trying to do is get all the right work done as efficiently as possible
so that our customers get the best outcome - the best outcome from a safety perspective, the best outcome from a reliability perspective.
All of it.
What I'm excited about with Foundry is to have a common operating platform that can be a key enabler to that,
It's already starting to yield some very significant benefits in the wildfire space, and I'm looking forward to expanding that across the enterprise.