Atlanta Gas Light

Project Overview

Atlanta Gas Light, a Southern Company Gas subsidiary, is the Southeast’s largest natural gas distribution utility, serving over 1.7 million customers across Georgia. The company’s history dates back to 1856. It operates and maintains the infrastructure necessary to deliver natural gas to customers of certified marketers in Georgia’s deregulated market.

Faced with increasing regulatory demands and the need to improve operational efficiency, Atlanta Gas Light sought a solution that could optimize its existing platform for real-time data processing and predictive analytics.

Problem Statement and Approach

Atlanta Gas Light had already implemented a real-time gas feedback solution using machine learning engines and subsystems that alerted users to issues with their components and provided recommendations for corrective actions. However, the system was limited to reactive responses, only addressing problems as they occurred. To meet regulatory requirements and enhance system capabilities, the company needed a proactive analytics solution that could predict and prevent issues before they arose.

The primary challenges included:

• Developing a configuration workflow that eliminated the need for code manipulation.
• Implementing a “health check” feature for uptime monitoring.
• Integrating email notifications to enhance system functions.
• Ensuring regulatory compliance while reducing operational costs.

Atlanta Gas Light partnered with New Era Technology to address these challenges, leveraging our expertise to elevate their technological capabilities.

Solution

Gathering and retaining large volumes of data over extended periods was crucial to enabling high-level analytics and machine learning. The existing system’s data retention needed to be improved for predictive modeling, necessitating the development of a new data solution.

We designed and implemented a comprehensive data warehouse to collect, organize, and store IoT and manufacturing data. This platform was the foundation for advanced analytics and machine learning initiatives, enabling the company to move from reactive to proactive operations.

Key deliverables included:

• Azure and Cloud Solution Architecture: We developed a scalable architecture to support the new system.
• Technology Recommendations and Implementation Planning: Identified and planned the integration of technologies to meet the project’s objectives.
• Integration Model Design: Developed a model to ingest and harmonize enterprise source data.
• Azure Data Pipelines: Built robust pipelines to process near real-time data from various devices.
• Curated Data Model for BI & Analytics: Integrated the collected data into a structured model, enabling comprehensive business intelligence and analytics.
• Demonstration of BI Capabilities: Demonstrated the system’s capabilities, proving the business value of the newly integrated data.

Through these efforts, Atlanta Gas Light met regulatory requirements and optimized its platform for better performance, faster processing, and enhanced predictive capabilities.

TOOLS & METHODS

• Strategy and Concept Design
• Generative and Evaluative User Interviews
• Wireframe + Prototyping
• Usability Prototype testing
• Client Management
• Design System
• Component Library
• Microsoft Azure
• Tools: Pen & Paper, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Indesign, Axure RP