Evergy streamlines operational practices with Oracle Utilities
Business challenges
Evergy delivers electricity to more than 1.6 million customers in Kansas and Missouri.
Why Evergy Chose Oracle
To implement its vision, Evergy chose Oracle Utilities Live Energy Connect (Oracle Utilities LEC) as a middleware integration platform for its operational data. Oracle Utilities LEC was selected because it could simplify creation and management of data flows across operational technology (OT) systems while delivering a platform for interoperability between systems so that the entire DA network could populate Evergy’s operational systems with data.
Also, Evergy was able to issue remote controls and display operational data in real time with a GIS model, and also provide Data Front End Processor subsystems to Oracle NMS.
Results
By leveraging Oracle Utilities LEC, Evergy was able to quickly develop, integrate, and implement an updated data architecture that displays all operational data in real time, monitors the status of field devices, establishes alarm parameters, and controls more than 3,000 automated devices transacting 90,000 data points of information.
Evergy completed the project in less than six months and was able to reduce the number of operator screens to two from six. Evergy is now looking to double the capacity of the system to meet the company’s pressing device automation demands.
With Oracle Utilities LEC, Evergy reduced the total cost and time of aggregating all operational data. Because Evergy embedded some of its operational logic in Oracle Utilities LEC, it is hopeful this will reduce future integration requirements by making the data integration of new assets and systems more efficient. Oracle Utilities LEC functions as a protocol translator, data cleaner, OT message bus, and modular hub for future integrations. Oracle Utilities LEC strengthened Evergy’s existing OT architecture.
Just a few days after going live, Evergy experienced one of its largest outage events. This unplanned stress test of Oracle Utilities LEC was a success: All systems performed as expected and the time needed to restore power was significantly shorter than with its previous solution.