Utility Week

24 | 21ST - 27TH FEBRUARY 2020 | UTILITY WEEK out to customers to remind them that they have an appointment or a visit. e robots free up people to focus on value-added activities. ey help us take some of the noise away." Bots were used by United Utilities during the extended period of dry weather last summer to increase the frequency of operational reports used to manage and prioritise the availability of network teams. e standard one-to-four reports issued daily were ramped up to hourly updates. Another system launched by the water company in November combines human intelligence and automation to assess and update geographical data across its catchment area. Infusing intelligence into RPA by combining machine learning capabilities with process automation, can enable bots to analyse, comprehend, and draw conclusions from data. Northumbrian Water is aiming to exploit advances in speech-to-text technology, which has improved considerably over the past year, to partially automate the call centre agent experience. "We will look at transcribing calls with the agent in real time to see if we can automate the call wrap," resources and enables consumers to trade fl exibility, and Mixergy, whose smart hot water tank that learns the habits of homeowners so it can meet their needs without wasting heat. For many consumers, the fi rst practical experience of IoT will be smart speakers/voice-activated assistants, and utilities are harnessing the technology to automate the customer experience. EDF Energy's Alexa "skill", for Amazon Alexa and Echo devices, enables custom- ers to use voice to check their account balance, next payment date, submit a meter reading, and verify when their tariff is due to end. Last year Octopus Energy became the fi rst energy supplier to off er real-time energy pricing using voice. Customers on its Agile Octopus tariff can ask Alexa questions about their energy tariff , to help them curb usage and maximise the use of cheaper energy during off peak periods. Elderly people or those with special needs may be able to live independently for longer, thanks to an IoT-based home monitoring system developed by EDF Energy and tech start-up Howz. e system monitors home energy usage and com- bines the data with sensor data for factors such as movement and temperature to work out a pattern of daily behaviour. If the pattern is broken, it alerts the individual's family via a remote interface. Smart meters provide basic real-time consumption information and with greater pressure from Ofgem, the rate of installations is set to accelerate. However, more sophisticated capabilities are available now. e home energy assistant Verv uses machine learning to break the mains signal down into individual home appliances. e system uses an IoT box clamped to the mains line to sample electricity consumption at up to a million times a second and uses machine learning to analyse the specifi c electrical signatures of appliances. is data can help customers reduce energy consumption, alert them if a device is faulty or if they have inadvert- ently left it on, and enable the next step in smart grid development by promoting user-friendly demand-side response and dynamic pricing. 2020 is unlikely to be the year smart homes become mainstream, but it's only a matter of time. W i l l s o f t w a r e r o b o t s s p e l l t h e e n d o f t i r e s o m e t a s k s ? Robotic process automation (RPA) is a rapidly advancing fi eld that can help utilities boost operational eff iciency by automating various high volume, repetitive, or manual tasks, either in the contact centre, the back off ice or fi eld operations. e RPA market was the fastest growing enterprise software category in 2018, according to research company Gartner, and integration with AI and other intelligence is expected drive adoption even further in 2020. Water company United Utilities has a dedicated robotics team that currently runs around 40 processes using bots, a transformation it says has "given back" over 35,000 hours to the business to date. Genevieve Wallace Dean, head of robots at United Utilities, tells Flex: "We use RPA for various purposes in the reporting space, from gathering multiple data sources together, through to sending text messages W i l l B l o c k c h a i n a n d A u g m e n t e d R e a l i t y s t a r t t o d e l i v e r ? e role that emerging technologies play in the indus- try's future is never certain, but recent research by Utility Week indicates that organisations are currently sceptical of the benefi ts of blockchain and virtual or augmented reality (AR). While over half of senior industry fi gures surveyed said they had live applications for the IoT or AI, the proportion dropped to less than 20 per cent for virtual or AR, and under 10 per cent for blockchain. Richard Hampshire, at CGI, tells Flex: "In many of the utility use cases where blockchain has been put forward, techniques and processes were already in place to eff ectively manage them. Blockchain, or other forms of distributed ledger technology still need to demonstrate incremental benefi ts over what already exists. One promising area is in the smart fl exible energy system we're heading towards." Blockchain could become the decentralised archi- tecture needed to manage smart grids and related services such as fl exibility trading platforms and

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