UConn has opened a new weather center designed to give utility companies fair warning when it comes to potentially disruptive storms.
Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, has formed an exclusive long-term partnership with UConn and Eversource Energy to combine their storm outage prediction technology to create a single, more precise and accurate model.
UConn’s unique analytics model will be integrated into Schneider’s WeatherSentry Online (WSO) product, enabling utilities to better understand the expected impacts of storms on their utility infrastructure and to make better decisions in preparing for storms to minimize restoration time, cost and impacts to customers.
Jon Reifschneider, vice president of weather at Schneider Electric, described the collaboration as unique because of the ground-breaking technology involved. “This project will also allow us to commercialize our comprehensive weather decision-support platform, taking it to new heights, fulfilling our commitment to provide innovative solutions for utilities to optimize their operations, and better serve their customers,” he said.
The project will be housed at the Eversource Energy Center on the UConn campus. The center is a partnership between the university and Eversource to develop approaches for delivering reliable power and responding to severe weather and security events.
Becoming a member of the partnership, Schneider Electric will apply its weather technology, weather data and expertise in developing scalable solutions for utilities globally. With this new project, Schneider and Eversource will expand upon their long-term relationship in supporting storm preparation efforts by combining UConn’s Outage Prediction Model with Schneider’s WSO platform and other weather services.
