Big Data In Energy Industry

We have talked about role of Big Data in Healthcare and Startup/SME, previously. This article looks at Big Data’s impact in Energy industry.

Energy industry, the industry that literally lights up our world, is an industry faced with some big challenges. Our world is made up of gadgets and appliances that constantly need to be powered up with some form of energy, be it electricity, petrol, cooking oil, or anything else. So, the production of Energy never stops, and the requirement of Energy is unlikely to go down as well.

Despite the grand scale of Energy industry and its demand, Energy industry is a high-risk, high-investment market. Oil rigs explode, oil spills occur, mines collapse, nuclear reactors blast, and renewable energy sources are so far inefficient and expensive. All of these also have a huge impact on the environment and the nature we live in, and it’s a big challenge to mitigate this risk.

With such challenges, there is urgent need for relevant data and good analytics. Analytics can become a core factor that improves the functioning, the performance, the maintenance, and the growth of the entire Energy industry. So, it is no surprise that Energy industry is out looking for proper solutions that provide a way to collect, synthesize, analyze, and integrate data, and eventually improve operations.

Operational Safety

Every section of Energy industry could use Big Data and Analytics in a good way and improve processes greatly, but one of the primary places in need of Big Data is the operational safety.

There are often talked about extreme incidents of negligence, human error, undetected faults, that led to human lives being lost and a lot of damage to our environment when it comes to Energy industry.

For that specifically, the oil, petroleum, gas and nuclear companies are making more investment in sensors and monitoring technologies that can keep a good check on appliance status, pressure, temperature, shock capacity, expected lifetime and so on. These tasks, though manually trackable, are much more effective when tracked centrally and digitally.

A tracking at this scale makes sure there’s a systemic approach to when a piece needs replacing or when the entire system needs service or what to do when there is some damage. This greatly reduces the risk to lives and environment and gives advance warning if something were to happen.

Better Surveying

As mentioned before, investment in Energy industry is a high-risk, high-investment situation. Hence, a lot of resources are being added in initial surveying before starting a project. Information like location of the plant, the land/water type, height/depth, temperature range, soil quality, satellite imaging, weather conditions etc. form the basis of the survey that are analyzed along with historical data to calculate the likelihood of success of the project.

For an example, for a renewable energy company setting up a solar panel, it is very important to track the longitude/latitude of the location, the amount of sunlight received each day, the angle of sunlight, the elevation from ground, cloudiness, soil quality, area available, and so on. For a hydro power station, information like water force, water quantity, water quality, depth of water or height of water, terrain type, soil quality, maximum and minimum flow of water, etc. are some of the factors that need to be measured. For a petroleum refinery they need to know about factors like soil quality, available minerals in the soil, depth of layers for fuel, quality of fuel, and so on.

All this data collected in different forms can be analyzed on a national or global scale and can be better used to set up locations for future plants, or use it for town planning.

Clean Energy

There’s a stigma attached with Energy industry, that it is out to destroy the environment. But with more data and knowledge coming in each minute and each day, the industry is slowly but steadily turning towards clean energy. More and more companies are countries are turning towards renewable energy sources, and it definitely seems to be a step in the right direction.

There are better ways to utilize the renewable energy now, the cost of generating energy through renewable sources is getting low, the efficiency is getting higher, there are better ways to produce energy. But there is still a lot of room for improvement and expansion, and that is where Big Data is helping greatly.

Weather data merged with cloud imaging helps predict energy generation for each day, or guide the motion of solar panels to get more sunlight, and so on. With time, this tracking will keep improving till the production of renewable energy gets cheaper compared to fossil fuel energy.

Future of Energy Industry

Energy industry has a lot of opportunity for growth and development when it comes to data and analytics. Energy industry is on the cusp of growing exponentially with data, and it is a really interesting industry to lookout for.

Knowledge brought us so far, and data will take us ahead. In times of troubles, data will solve our problems and save us from making mistakes. In times of growth, data will present new ways to improve our outcome and the bottom-line.