Snohomish County PUD Is Transforming Utility Operations Using Meter Data Management on the Cloud with AWS Partner TRC Companies

In 2021, SnoPUD decided to modernize its metering system and elected to upgrade to an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). The utility wanted to use the latest metering infrastructure and technology to better serve customer needs in the future, enhance service reliability and efficiency, integrate renewable energy, and increase energy conservation options. It began replacing over 380,000 electric and 23,000 water meters with smart meters that provide detailed data on energy consumption and facilitate two-way communication.

As part of the Connect Up initiative, the AMI enhances remote monitoring and uses metering data for operational decision-making. The AMI collects and stores meter data as part of its headend system and manages this data through TRC's MDMS on Siemens Gridscale X. In addition to using the collected data for billing, SnoPUD can analyze the information to advance sustainability, maintain power distribution efficiency, and optimize costs.

After learning from the experiences of other power utilities that managed complex on-premises MDMSs, SnoPUD decided to operate its MDMS as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution on the cloud. The choice to move the MDMS, now managed by TRC, off premises not only made the utility more flexible but also lowered its carbon footprint. “The industry is changing, and we need to be agile and innovative,” says Marc Rosson, enterprise architect at SnoPUD. “New opportunities, enhancements, and features come out every year, and TRC can run those upgrades seamlessly, quickly, and in an agile way.” TRC also had expertise in using AWS solutions at scale for other power utilities. “TRC has a deep bench on knowing how to run on AWS,” says Rosson.

The MDMS is a distributed system that uses Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) to ingest and process streaming data in near real time. This data is then sent to various components of the MDMS, including compute on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure and resizable compute capacity for virtually any workload. Because TRC can scale Amazon EC2 instances up or down based on demand, it can allocate resources efficiently and cost-effectively. Thus, using TRC’s MDMS, SnoPUD has the flexibility to scale as its AMI program grows.

TRC uses Amazon CloudWatch to observe and monitor resources and applications for the MDMS. “By using Amazon CloudWatch, we optimized system performance and could proactively manage potential resource contention issues, focusing on remedies for events before they become problematic,” says Joe Tellez, senior director of digital cloud strategy and business development at TRC.

To build security into its design, TRC used an AWS Well-Architected review to help build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure. “AWS tools make sure the environment is secure, and we at TRC make sure that it is configured correctly and the right guardrails are applied for this environment,” says Tellez. TRC also uses multiple AWS Regions for disaster recovery, which helps to build resiliency. “The AMI environment needs a high degree of fidelity, resiliency, availability, and security, which led to our decision to build the SaaS solution on AWS,” says Tellez.

Using the TRC-managed MDMS, SnoPUD ingests and validates data, prepares it for billing, and exports it to its customer portal and headend system for large-scale analytics. Working alongside another AWS Partner, SnoPUD used Amazon Redshift—a service to power data-driven decisions with the best price performance—to manage the data lake for its headend system, thereby modernizing its data workloads to deliver business insights. The MDMS manages 160 million meter data measurements, gathered daily for various use cases. For example, SnoPUD can use its meters as voltage sensors so that the voltage across its distribution system operates at the most efficient level. This optimization helps SnoPUD lower the cost of delivering power and save money for its customers.

The system, which went live in June 2023, helped SnoPUD achieve high availability. “Using the MDMS managed by TRC, we have 100 percent uptime,” says Adam Peretti, AMI technology manager at SnoPUD. “Having resiliency with seamless failovers and no business operation impacts is a favorite feature.” By the time SnoPUD completes AMI deployment in 2026, it will have installed 400,000 meters, which will collect data every 15 seconds. The MDMS will scale for the growing number of meters and data volume.

Using TRC as a managed service provider helped SnoPUD save time and empowered its staff to do higher-value work. By choosing a cloud-managed MDMS over an on-premises solution, three full-time employees no longer need to maintain the system internally. The MDMS is helping SnoPUD be more sustainable as remote monitoring and troubleshooting reduce the need for mechanics to drive to different locations for physical inspections, with projected savings of 83 million dollars in meter reading–related costs over the system’s lifetime. The AMI deployment also helped SnoPUD take on projects beyond its original scope. The increased control, visibility, and reliability of its grid through the MDMS won SnoPUD a 30-million-dollar grant from the US Department of Energy, which will help to improve system reliability, mitigate wildfire risks, and facilitate demand management. Being one of the first North American public utility agencies to deploy an MDMS on the cloud will only open doors to more innovation and efficiency for SnoPUD.