Customer case stories 17.11.2022
Helen Electricity Network transferred metering tasks to Aidon One
The replacements, new installations and removals of electricity meters in the Helsinki city area are managed with the map-based Aidon One SaaS solution. Planning and sharing of tasks and monitoring their status with one application makes the work of both installers and customer service easier.
Helen Electricity Network Ltd is responsible for electricity distribution to approximately 420,000 customers in Helsinki. The Metering Services team has a similar number of electricity meters with the related fieldwork to manage. Every month, installers of service partners perform approximately 2,000 meter replacements, new installations or removals – around 100 tasks per working day. Previously the tasks were managed by separate work order systems of the partners. The use of several parallel systems was laborious and impractical, and an overall picture of the state of the tasks was missing. The need for a unified solution was concrete. Aidon One, designed for the management of field work in distribution networks, was selected as the solution. It has been in use in Helsinki since November 2021.
Tasks and their performers in the same application
The implementation of Aidon One brought the metering tasks into one application used by Helen Electricity Network’s metering services and customer service, as well as the supervisors and installers of service partners. The tasks are entered into the customer information system, from where they are transferred through the integration interface as work orders to Aidon One. The work order contains a description of the task and information about metering point and the related metering device.
Aidon One visualises the tasks on a map and serves as an easy-to-use fieldwork tool for the installers. In addition, it facilitates the work of the partner companies’ supervisors. In Aidon One they only see the tasks assigned to their own company. Using Aidon One, they can schedule and distribute tasks to their installers and track their progress. Installers, on the other hand, see only their own tasks. When the installer at the work site updates the information of the completed task to the work order, the information is updated at the same time in the customer information system and in the systems of the meter reading service providers.
As the next step, the use of Aidon One will be expanded to include remote connection controls, i.e. switching electricity on or off at the customers. The controls are mainly run at night from the customer information system, but in case the night time control function has failed for some reason, customer service will use Aidon One for the purpose. Also ad-hoc disconnections or connections made on a fast schedule will be handled with Aidon One
Developing in cooperation
Christer Sundholm, Metering Specialist at Helen Electricity Network, says that the implementation project of Aidon One went smoothly in very good cooperation with Aidon. The project included some development work by Aidon, which complemented the functionality of the system to meet the requirements of Helen Electricity Network, for example in terms of information security.
“The most important improvement brought about by Aidon One is that the management of the meter replacement and removal work is now in the DSO company’s own hands and managed in a single system.”
According to Sundholm, the most important improvement brought about by Aidon One is that the management of the meter replacement and removal work is now in the DSO company’s own hands and managed in a single system. At the same time, the overall picture of the metering work is gained. The installers are satisfied, too. Using Aidon One is easy to learn and its versatile search features are praised.
Aidon One product manager Riku Lassila wants to thank the customer for the trust.
– Helen Electricity Network is the largest user organisation of Aidon One. I am happy and proud that we got the opportunity to implement such a large and demanding solution for the customer, and that together with our development team we were able to meet even the most challenging requirements of the customer. We refined the existing features to make them even better in terms of usability and also developed a lot of new things.
– This project reflects the Aidon way of working: it is based on close cooperation with the customer, the needs of the customer’s business and the development of suitable solutions for them. The results of the work benefit our entire customer community.
In the summer of 2022, Helen Electricity Network chose Aidon as its service partner for the electricity metering reform, which includes the delivery of 120,000 new metering equipment with their installations, as well as the remote reading service provided by Aidon. Aidon One is also part of Helen’s new AMR solution in this long-term service package.