Using Katapult Pro For Smart Grids: From Planning to Deployment

It’s easy to talk about the importance of reliability and how critical renewable energy is to the future of our grid. It’s a lot harder to actually build a reliable, renewable grid. 

Smart grids are the first major step towards both reliability and renewability. Smart tech helps protect the grid from outages and makes renewable energy sources easier to integrate, but utilities need to deploy smart technology to the right locations. This means assessing where smart switches and meters will have the greatest impact for their grid to stretch reliability dollars. 

With Katapult Pro’s Smart Grid Candidate workflows, teams can support utilities in smart grid deployment efforts to build a more robust grid. 

Locating the Best Places to Leverage Smart Tech

Teams start by uploading a list of a utility's potential candidate locations into Katapult Pro, which then populates as nodes across the map. 

Using Map Layers, a cell coverage and strength can be overlaid onto the map, and current smart technology can also be included. Then, based on the utility’s disqualifying and ideal characteristics, teams can use integrated street view to examine locations and assess from the office. This lets teams examine: 

• Site condition

• Vegetation management 

• Signal strength 

• Distance from other technology 

• And more! 

image of map with nodes and signal strength, right side panel showing different drop-downs for location candidacy 

By prioritizing back office work, engineering firms can save time and money while limiting field exposure. After office evals are completed, field crews can be deployed to specific qualifying locations to gather data. 

Using a field assessment checklist and data collection routine, crews need only answer a couple of questions about the location and collect photos necessary for engineering. By gathering qualifying data and engineering data at once, techs don’t have to go back to the same location over and over. 

Back at the office, staff can use the photo documentation to conduct virtual rideouts, presenting the best locations to utilities, design engineering plans, and generate construction packages on selected candidates. 

With Katapult Pro’s Smart Grid Candidate routines, you can build a healthier grid, selecting better candidates faster with fewer visits to the field. Talk to our team today to see it in action! https://www.katapultengineering.com/get-started