Siemens: Silicon Valley Power uses cloud to amp up its savings

Silicon Valley Power, the municipal utility for the City of Santa Clara, Calif., serves a community of innovation and technology made up of some of the world’s largest world-class high-tech companies. Serving thousands of municipal customers and approximately 50 commercial data centers, the utility wanted to upgrade its older version of EnergyIP Meter Data Management (MDM) solution. To do so it also sought out solutions that would allow the upgrade without causing service disruptions, increased installation costs, a steep learning curve for staff, and cyber security and compliance concerns. Siemens’ EnergyIP MDM Software-as-a-Service (MDM SaaS) helped address all of the utility’s requirements. EnergyIP MDM SaaS conforms with Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) STAR Level One cybersecurity guidelines. This registration demonstrates Siemens’ commitment to organizational security as a trusted cloud provider.

“The SaaS option for EnergyIP MDM really gave us the best of both worlds,” says Tim Lynch, Silicon Valley Power’s electric division manager. “We could upgrade our system virtually while also reducing our cost of ownership. Plus, moving to the cloud has lightened the workload significantly for our infrastructure staff and will provide additional process efficiency improvements.” The new user interface available in EnergyIP MDM SaaS will help streamline operations for Silicon Valley Power and make accessing and monitoring data faster and more efficient. This ease-of-use is estimated to save staff almost 85% of the time formerly spent doing everyday tasks and routines – translating into potential cost savings of roughly $100,000 per year.
Pre-installed and pre-built, MDM SaaS from Siemens uses AWS cloud platform to host utilities’ data. Utilities pay a subscription fee for using the system and obtaining high quality data for billing. The service offering is compatible with any manufacturer’s smart meter, and it can work for any size utility with the ability to scale as required. The service includes regular software upgrades, new features, and maintenance like bug fixes and security updates – all done by Siemens in the cloud.
“We are proud that Silicon Valley Power has chosen Siemens EnergyIP MDM SaaS offering to support its transition to SaaS for grid operations,” said Sabine Erlinghagen, CEO of Grid Software at Siemens Smart Infrastructure. “The benefits of this transition to the cloud are that users don´t have to deal with infrastructure, hardware, or system upgrades any more. As maintenance with real-time software and security updates is part of the subscription service, the meter data management system is kept cyber resilient, too. We are looking forward to working with Silicon Valley Power on this trendsetting project for grid operations.”
APPA (American Public Power Association) recently recognized Silicon Valley Power with a two-year Smart Energy Provider designation for demonstrating a commitment to and proficiency in energy efficiency, distributed generation and environmental initiatives that support the goal of providing safe, reliable, low-cost and sustainable electric service.