Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation has partnered with Sitetracker to track, prioritize and manage the repair and replacement of thousands of its electric transmission and distribution assets. The company will use Sitetracker to address the dramatic increase in assets that have been identified as requiring repair or replacement as part of a comprehensive inspection process, contributing to Central Hudson's mission to deliver safe, reliable electricity to its 300,000 electric customers in New York State.
Each year, Central Hudson is required to inspect and address 20 percent (about 5,000) of its electric T&D assets, including utility poles, transformers and enclosures for electric equipment. Historically, Central Hudson tracked asset inspections, repairs, and replacements manually, as most utilities have for decades. Central Hudson's quality of service remained high, but they faced many challenges with a manual process, including the potential for data loss, redundant data entry work, and difficulty reporting on and forecasting district- or company-level results. With more than 600 pole-miles of electric transmission lines, 7,200 pole miles of overhead distribution lines and 1,600 trench miles of underground distribution lines, these challenges led Central Hudson to explore new technologies to streamline T&D repairs and replacements identified during the inspection process.
"This increase in the volume of repair and replacement work presents an organizational challenge," says Charles Freni, Senior Vice President of Customer Services and T&D Operations. "We chose Sitetracker not only because their platform is purpose-built for efficiently managing thousands of projects at once, but because they will help us improve as an organization by connecting our crews in the field to project managers, estimators, and management back in the office."
Giuseppe Incitti, Sitetracker CEO, agrees: "We're excited to partner with Central Hudson to demonstrate how the utility industry can manage their increasing project workloads. Utilities face growing hurdles in scaling their operations effectively to upgrade existing assets, deploy and connect Distributed Energy Resources, and launch new communications infrastructure. We're thrilled to be able to help Central Hudson do just that."
Central Hudson expects to be able to repair and replace its existing T&D assets more efficiently, ensuring faster compliance with regulatory requirements, less time spent per job, and more visibility into past and future performance. The Sitetracker team looks forward to helping Central Hudson and the rest of the utility industry operate more effectively and better serve their customers.
