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Utilities & Smart Grid: Use Cases

CloudD and the Utility & Smart Grid Industry

CloudD can be used to build your smart grid connected products, such as smart meters, grid monitoring applications, and street light monitoring solutions. The advent of the internet of things represents an enormous opportunity for utility providers and city planners in that it enables providers and businesses the ability to monitor and control remote assets easily and without enormous capital investment. The monitoring and control of remote assets such as smart meters or street lights from a web page or mobile app can create significant cost savings in the form of reduced energy usage, better response times to outages or emergencies, and improved analytics.

For utilities, CloudD and the internet of things offers an affordable and highly capable alternative to traditional methods of monitoring electricity usage. CloudD's IOT platform can replace both traditional manual meter reading methods and newer solutions such as radio mesh networks. Additionally, through our partners, we provide the latest customer information services (CIS) to enable robust data monitoring, customer billing, and analytics.

1. Smart Meter Solution

Cloud Utility District offers an end-to-end smart meter solution that enables bi-directional cellular communication with your meters using 4G LTE cellular technology. Get data updates from your meters as often as you want (daily, hourly, etc) and access that data through mobile apps, web pages, or proprietary platforms. This is a TURN KEY, managed solution - ideal for utilities of all sizes that don't want to manage their own IT centers and want to roll out a smart meter system at their own pace.

Together with our partners, our smart meter solution gives utilities the ability to manage customer accounts, implement pre-pay billing services with ease, monitor outages on a map in real-time, remotely control meters from a simple interface, and empower their customer base through web and mobile based tools.

Overview of Our Smart Meter System

Benefits

Real-Time Meter Monitoring:

CloudD's IOT paltform makes it possible to monitor your grid in real-time. Our connectivity platform was specifically designed for large scale device deployments such as in the case of smart meters. Our system is cellular based and, together with our partners, we offer robust billing and customer information management systems.

Scalability:

Our platform can handle any sized smart meter deployment you need.

4G LTE Technology:

In our cellular smart meter deployments we use the latest 4G LTE technology.

Customer & Account Management:

Easily analyze and interact with the data generated by your connected meters. View and manage billing, customer power usage, and remotely control your meters. View and respond to outages in real-time with a map based monitoring system. Remotely connect and disconnect meters from mobile and web based tools.

Flexible Deployment:

Unlike traditional mesh network smart meter solutions, our cellular solution does not require large scale equipment installations or investment. You can deploy our system one household at a time or at whatever pace you need.

2. Smart Grid

The power of the internet of things and CloudD extends well beyond the smart meter. CloudD can be used to remotely monitor and control any aspect of a utility's grid, from the monitoring of power lines to capacitors, etc. CloudD can also power environmental sensors on the grid - grid operators can know in real-time the weather conditions and state of their equipment without a having to physically visit those locations.

With remote monitoring, downtime on a utilities grid can be significantly reduced. Maintenance costs can also be greatly reduced as the fuel and labor costs necessary to maintain the grid will be far less than manual processes.

Benefits

Save Time and Money:

Remotely detect flaws, anticipate failures with predicitive maintenance, operate remote machinery and assets at the most optimal level. Avoid having to manually monitor the status of your remote assets in the field. With CloudD, monitoring and maintenance costs can be dramatically reduced through predictive(less fuel used to visit remote sites, fewer personnel needed to monitor the grid).

Faster Response Time:

Respond faster to outages - you'll know right away when there's a problem.

3. Street Light Monitoring

Cities throughout the United States and the world at large are looking for ways to both save money and run city services more efficiently. One method to achieve these goals is through the use of "smart street lights."

CloudD enables the remote monitoring and control of sensors placed in street lights, allowing cities to remotely turn on and off lighting (saving energy), remotely adjust lighting intensity, and reduce maintenance costs on lighting assets (real-time monitoring allows for more proactive maintenance with lower labor costs).

Benefits

Monitor and Reduce Electricity Use:

Reduce electricity use through the remote monitoring and control of street lights.

Further Reading on the Internet of Things and the Smart Grid

Oil & Gas: Use Cases

CloudD and the Oil & Gas Industry

The oil and gas sector stands to greatly benefit from the real-time monitoring and control capabilities of CloudD and the internet of things. With assets often located in remote locations and profitability of companies in this sector strongly influenced by down-time and maintenance costs, being able to better predict and control these costs is of paramount importance. With CloudD and the internet of things, oil and gas operators get instant visibility into the state of their assets and environemntal conditions on the ground.

IOT solves a number of problems for the oil and gas sector: by enabling real-time remote monitoring and control of assets, operators can save on fuel costs (fewer physical visits), labor costs (fewer personnel needed to monitor assets), and maintenance costs (the condition of assets will be tracked in real-time, allowing operators to preemptively solve problems before they become huge headaches).

1. Pipeline Monitoring and Control

Monitor the state of your pipelines remotely with our IOT platform.

Benefits

Reduce Maintenance Costs:

Reduce maintenance costs by not having to physically travel to check up on your assets.

Real-Time Status:

Know right away when a problem has occured.

Automate, Monitor, and Control:

Automate, monitor, and control remote assets in the field.

2. Remote Asset Monitoring

With vast distances a common challenge in the oil and gas industry, knowing the status of your remote assets (tanks, pumps, wells, vehiclmes) can be a huge benefit to any business. IOT sensors and Cloud Utility District's connectivity capabilities enables you to keep 24/7 watch over your assets and enables bi-directional communication and control of these assets.

Benefits

Monitor Status:

Automatically monitor the status of your wells, pumps, tanks, etc.

Never Lose Track of Your Assets:

Track the location of your remote assets in real-time with CloudD. Our platform offers

Save on Costs:

CloudD and the internet of things enables the remote monitoring and control of assets in the field. This can lead to significant cost savings in the form of lower fuel use, lower maintenance costs, and less need for labor.

Further Reading on the Internet of Things and the Oil & Gas Industry

Alternative Energy: Use Cases

CloudD and Alternative Energy

The increasing adoption of technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels means that energy generation will increasingly be decentralized - households and businesses will generate their own energy or get their energy from multiple "green" sources. Both users and generators of alternative energy in this decentralized scenario will benefit greatly from the real-time data capabilities of the internet of things.

With the unpredictable nature of energy generation from alternative sources such as wind and solar, monitoring the power generation from these assets - and coordinating it with electricity use - in real-time can be a necessity. CloudD can make implementing such solutions simple and cost effective. Energy companies or developers looking to build products in this area can use CloudD to develop end-to-end solutions for tracking alternative energy usage, energy generation, and energy storage (and coordinating all three). We can work with a variety of sensor devices, provide you with a reliable connectivity platform to communicate with and control these devices, and provide you with front end user-interfaces to interact with these monitoring systems.

1. Wind and Solar Power Monitoring

With wind and solar power facilities often being located in far-flung locations, being able to remotely monitor and control these assets can save operators a tremendous amount of time and money when it comes to maintenance, fuel use, and labor costs.

Households with personal solar panels can use CloudD to monitor in real-time their energy generation and coordinate this with their electricity needs. Energy storage can also greatly benefit from real-time monitoring.

Benefits

Real-Time Monitoring:

Monitor your wind and solar assets in real-time. Know in real-time how much energy your solar panels or wind turbines are generating, better coordinate energy generation with energy use, improve the efficiency of your energy storage capabilities.

Automation:

Remotely configure your wind or solar equipment to perform certain tasks automatically. The IOT and the automation that it enables can greatly reduce your operational costs.

Greater Efficiency:

Increase the efficiency of your assets with the IOT - with remote monitoring and control, operators can avoid time consuming and costly manual tasks. Real-time monitoring can also enable more efficient energy generation.

Remote Diagnostics:

Quickly identify and resolve issues in real-time. Greatly reduce the amount of manual maintenance and monitoring required to keep your assets in peak condition.

Further Reading on the Internet of Things and Alternative Energy

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