Back to Basics: Electric Cooperatives, Wood Pole Inspections, and Data Management

7-minute read

This article is the third installment of our new “Back to Basics” series. Throughout this series Clearsight leadership will discuss foundational topics in the world of electric infrastructure, including the impact and importance of wood pole inspections and emerging technology in electric inspections.

In this article:

• Learn why proper data management and analysis is a crucial component of any electric cooperative’s inspection program.
• Understand the challenges faced in data management for wood pole inspections.
• Discover how the integration of cutting-edge inspection technology, artifical intellegence (AI) and analytics provides a highly accurate and comprehensive approach to ensuring the safety and reliability of electric infrastructure.

Data management: the make or break component of any electric cooperative’s inspection program. Proper data management and analysis is crucial for leveraging findings from inspections into actionable insights – insights that can be used to improve maintenance practices and ensure continued safety and reliability.

For those who are less familiar, the core mission of electric cooperatives is to provide safe, reliable electricity to their members. Like utilities, they want to prevent outages and reduce overall costs. To ensure uninterrupted service and sustain the dependability of their infrastructure, regular and high-quality inspections are essential to prevent outages.

By enabling cooperatives to conduct proactive or predictive maintenance, high-quality inspections facilitate the identification of potential issues before they become safety hazards or cause outages. Through comprehensive inspection programs, downtime and maintenance costs can be minimized while simultaneously enhancing system reliability and safety.

Data Management Challenges 

Electric cooperatives face specific challenges when it comes to data management for wood pole inspections. Some of these challenges include:

• Data consistency: If inspections are performed by different inspection teams at different times, there can be variations in how the data is collected. Even with the same inspections team, labor-intensive inspections and human fatigue can make it challenging to ensure that data is collected consistently. Inconsistent data collection makes it difficult to compare data over time.
• The “Data Wall”: Wood pole inspections generate a large amount of data, which can be difficult to manage, store, back up, and secure. Cooperatives have shared with us their painful experiences with traditional inspections, where data is collected and stored on physical drives that often pile up on desks, and can even become corrupted, resulting in a system overload that has been dubbed the “data wall”..
• Data accessibility: Engineers, maintenance crews, management – it’s challenging to make sure inspection data is available to each of these stakeholders at critical decision points. On the other hand, cybersecurity is also critical to the well-being of an electric cooperative. Having a secure, centralized, always-available database is crucial.
• Data quality: While unintentional, human error is common. Inspection teams may miss or misidentify issues, especially if they only see assets from the ground or through processes that require a large amount of manual work. Data is subject to being input incorrectly into the system or not recorded at all. Ensuring that data is captured, recorded, reviewed, and verified before it is used for analysis is paramount to ensure that insights are accurate.
• Data analysis: After all the hard work that goes into an inspection, it’s important that data is accurately analyzed so that findings can be identified, prioritized, and turned into actionable insights. Analysis requires specialized tools and techniques, as well as trained professionals who can interpret the data and provide recommendations for maintenance and repairs.

Related: 3 Drone Inspection Data Management Tips to Help Utilities & Co-Ops Get the Most Value

Overcoming these challenges necessitates a comprehensive approach to data management, starting with the accurate and reliable collection of data. Standardizing inspections ensures that outcomes are consistent, objective, and repeatable. The collected data should be entered into a secure and centralized database, with regular backups. By maintaining such a database, electric cooperatives can swiftly review all inspections and make well-informed decisions regarding the health of their infrastructure.

After data is collected and centralized, it can be analyzed using various tools and techniques. Proper analysis can uncover trends and patterns, offering valuable insights into the condition of wood poles and highlighting areas that may require further attention. Advanced analysis techniques, including machine learning algorithms, can uncover hidden patterns that may not be immediately noticeable to human analysts.

How Constellation Clearsight Uses AI and Machine Learning 

 While we embrace technology, human experts are central to our business and to every inspection. Our teams are industry experts who are trusted by electric cooperatives. Specifically, our data analysis team has years of boots-on-ground, in-field electric inspection experience. We support electric cooperatives day in and day out and know what to look for in every inspection. 

We take our expert analysis to the next level by validating and enhancing our findings through our proprietary platform, which utilizes advanced algorithms. Clearsight’s machine learning algorithms are trained to quickly and accurately identify patterns in inspection data that indicate specific types of issues – issues that are not immediately apparent to a human analyst. 

Our algorithms are also useful for predictive maintenance. By analyzing large amounts of inspection data over time, our algorithms identify trends that indicate potential issues with the wood poles before they become safety hazards or operational problems. Using the secure, always available Clearsight platform, cooperatives can quickly locate and proactively address priority issues. Our comprehensive solution allows cooperatives to focus on providing quality member services, reducing downtime and maintenance costs, and improving the safety and reliability of their system.

Why Constellation Clearsight? 

Proper data management and analysis are critical components in the maintenance and reliability of electric cooperative infrastructures. Electric cooperatives face challenges in maintaining their infrastructure, and these challenges can be mitigated through accurate and consistent data collection, centralized databases, and advanced analysis techniques such as machine learning and predictive maintenance.

To ensure accurate data collection, it is important for inspection teams to follow standardized procedures and utilize specialized tools. Trained professionals can then analyze the inspection data to provide accurate and actionable insights. Centralized databases allow for easy access to data and facilitate effective decision-making.

By implementing effective data management and analysis programs, electric cooperatives can provide reliable and safe service to their members. Constellation Clearsight offers a proven methodology for data management and analysis that can make a significant difference. Schedule a demo today to see how our services can help your electric cooperative and be sure to check out our previous installments of the “Back to Basics” series, where we discuss foundational topics in the world of electric infrastructure like emerging technologies and importance of wood pole inspections.

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