UK Power Networks gets smart about cloud transformation

For some organizations, shifting to the cloud has been a relatively quick race toward highly publicized benefits, such as scalability. For others, such as UK Power Networks, a more methodical and protracted journey has proved to be the best approach.

The London-based energy distributor and system operator is close to completing a major migration to a hybrid cloud infrastructure that will serve roughly one third of all residents and businesses in the United Kingdom. Centered on Microsoft Azure for its cloud needs, UK Power Networks will retain on-prem systems in two data centers to store highly secure, sensitive data and services that are vulnerable to cyberattacks, says CIO Matt Webb, who has been with the power company for 15 years.

UK Power Networks was created following a merger of three licensed electricity distribution networks brought together under one roof in 2010 by EDF Energy Networks, where Webb served as head of enterprise data management. Following the merger, the energy company began its digital transformation by unifying the three networks under one ERP system, SAP, with plans to eventually evolve to SAP’s S/4HANA SaaS-based model.

Next was moving small numbers of workloads to the Azure cloud, very gradually, until the organization was prepared to make a big migration starting two years ago, Webb says, adding that the utility’s methodical approach to digital transformation was to ensure the lights stayed on.

“The reality is we’ve been incrementally migrating certain applications, workloads, and processes to the cloud over a number of years. But we made a strategic decision a couple of years ago to effectively do a wholesale migration to the cloud, except for some operational systems to have direct control and oversight over critical national infrastructure,” Webb tells CIO.com.

UK Power Networks, which is owned by Hong Kong–based Cheung Kong Holdings, also operates and maintains electrical networks for the London Underground, Heathrow and Stansted airports, and Canary Wharf.

Deliberate path pays off

When designing UK Power Networks’ digital infrastructure, Webb was deliberate about balancing the core benefits of cloud computing — scalability, elasticity, and flexibility — with increasingly high-demand workloads and processes across various business units while keeping a close eye on costs. The migration of approved workloads and applications to the cloud is set to be completed by October 2024 and has thus far been completed without any business disruption, he says.

“It’s very easy to think the cloud can get you this utopia but you can get things very, very wrong, especially from a commercial perspective and FinOps aspects,” Webb adds. “I think we made the wise decision to walk instead of running to the cloud.”

Webb’s approach contrasts to that of many enterprises that went all-in quickly on the cloud — only to now be rethinking those strategies in light of unanticipated cost overruns.

As part of its transformation, UK Power Networks partnered with Databricks, Tata Consulting Services, Moringa Partners, and others to not only manage the cloud migration but also help integrate IoT devices and smart meters to deliver highly granular, real-time analytics.

Throughout its digital journey, UK Power Networks has had to deal with the legacy technology landscape of three separate license areas and has built performance metrics, KPIs, and service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure reliability while advancing services and performance afforded by the cloud and connected data.

Its partnership with Databricks helped transform UK Power Networks’ data warehouse into a Delta Lake architecture, designed to serve the increasingly complex demands and use cases of customers. This involved leveraging tools from Databricks and Alteryx to provide “highly curated, reliable and accessible data resource and tools that businesses can use to ingest, integrate, analyze, and build their own intelligence,” Webb notes. His IT team is currently evaluating automation tools such as Automation Anywhere, but that effort remains in its infancy.

US Power Networks employs 6,000 people and serves 8 million customers in Southeast England and East of England, including the city of London. On the cloud project, the CIO dedicated 50 to 100 of his 300-person IT team along with its integration partners.

Reliability paramount in increasingly complex market

As a pure network owner and operator, UK Power Networks accepts diverse sources of energy from traditional electrical power stations dotting the countryside, as well as increasing numbers of solar generators and wind farms, as well as offshore sources of energy, Webb says, adding that the electrification of vehicles is also making new demands on the “dynamics” of its network.

The traditional one-directional central generation of energy through transmission to distribution to the customer is no longer the way energy flows through the network. Webb sees localized solar and wind farms on the coast pumping in energy at different ends of the transmission line, shifting supply and demand and the physical dynamics of the network. “We have to actively control and monitor the network in a way we never used to and make sure we don’t get an overload, maintain stability across the system as a whole,” Webb notes.

“The energy ecosystem is becoming increasingly complex in terms of the number of stakeholders and participants, [and changes] the amount of competition and the way the market operates. Therefore, the need to interoperate and have the intention digital systems that can talk to each other to allow optimization, maintain stability, and increasingly recognize the need to decarbonize,” Webb says.

One energy industry analyst notes accurate forecasting of energy supply is essential to the bottom line but has become more complex for both the energy suppliers and the network operators.

“With renewable energy, sunshine and wind are sources of free fuel. Most of the energy transacted in wholesale competitive markets is sold in Day Ahead markets. Operators make a commitment to deliver a specific amount of energy for every hour at a specific price,” says Peter Detwiler, principal at NorthBridge Energy Partners. “If they don’t deliver, they are on the hook for the real-time spot market price, in the most volatile commodity market in the world. So, the ability to gain better insight into how much wind and sunshine will show up tomorrow — translated into power output — increases the confidence as to how much operators can bid into the market, lowering the risk profile and lubricating the market.”

UK Power Networks’ digital transformation to the cloud and data analytics is enhancing how it accepts and distributes various energy sources, but CIO Webb hopes more advanced technologies will improve the system performance.

“There’s a huge amount of analysis we undertake in response to network-related issues and outages, but also in proactive modeling, forecasting around demand prediction, predictive maintenance and that is extended to more sophisticated use cases especially in the distribution system operation activity we have, which is all about optimizing utilization of the network,” he says.

Webb has slowly begun experimenting with generative AI and copilot technologies but is not going to get too far ahead since the company continues to rationalize and connect legacy systems. Webb ran one initiative last year exploring how to apply generative AI to assess and analyze incoming customer traffic, categorize it by its nature, and direct it autonomously to specific teams based on time scales.

Webb would like to use generative AI for sentiment analysis but its initial use will be for basic tasks such as handling customer complaints, he says.

At UK Power Networks, reliability remains the ultimate metric of concern.

“We haven’t taken that final step because what we want to do is make sure we’re not firing something at the customer that is flawed in any way, shape, or form,” the CIO says. “We’re kind of building our competence and capabilities around it.”