Alabama Power, Baron Institute team up to improve state’s weather data, electric system reliability
As another hurricane season approaches, a partnership between Alabama Power and Baron Critical Weather Institute is aimed at gathering important weather data statewide to increase electric system safety, reliability and resiliency after storms.
Baron Weather founder, President and CEO Bob Baron approached leaders of the state’s largest utility last year about using its facilities for mounting high-definition cameras and sensors that will improve his “Weathernet.” The nonprofit institute was founded in 2018 to provide world-class instrumentation in support of public safety, education and economic development.
“He has a wonderful technology that needed height, power and connectivity, and Alabama Power has infrastructure in place to provide all of those things,” said Alabama Power’s Meredith Morgan, a senior engineer in Power Delivery Data Analytics and Innovation.
Morgan said the partnership is taking advantage of existing tower infrastructure, which will benefit customers and the company as data is received from the sensors and cameras that take a new image every 10 seconds. The cameras can be viewed online free, and the sensors instantly provide the temperature, air pressure, wind velocity, rainfall, humidity and more than 20 other real-time weather facts.
Alabama Power already has the cameras at locations in each of its six divisions, with a goal of having them mounted in every county where the company does business. The existing 24 cameras on Alabama Power facilities captured still frames of the tornado that struck Selma on Jan. 12.
Alabama Power tower camera captures tornado that struck Selma January 12, 2023 from Alabama News Center on Vimeo.
Information derived from each sensor and camera statewide is used for a wide variety of projects and, before the recent partnership, was already aiding the Alabama Department of Transportation, Alabama Emergency Management Agency, and other organizations and companies nationwide.
“If you don’t know what to do with it, it’s just a data point,” Morgan said. “So we are starting to learn more from this weather information and use that to improve reliability, restoration times and protection from weather events. We’re committed to learning how to utilize this data and make a difference for our customers.”
Principal Engineer David Huffstutler said traditional weather data has lacked key information that could improve year-to-year comparisons or help develop storm forecasts. He and fellow employees in Alabama Power’s Power Delivery Data Analytics and Innovation gathered reliability and weather information during the past five to six years, then recently created their own computer dashboard, using Microsoft’s Power BI, that more easily gathers and compiles crucial weather information.
“It’s really given us some insight that the weather is changing year over year,” Huffstutler said. “We can expect weather to do its thing. We can’t predict it. We can only react to the weather as it goes on. But we can start to use that weather data in a really meaningful way.”
The Alabama Power weather dashboard will help APC Power Delivery determine where money is best spent on equipment and technology, then where to spend more to improve safety, reliability and after-storm resiliency.
“It’s really easy to report weather history, but what does it look like in terms of going forward for Power Delivery and our customers?” Huffstutler noted.
“The more pieces of weather information that we have, the more useful it will be for all of us,” Morgan said.
Baron founded his company in 1989 after an EF4 tornado devastated Huntsville, killing 21 people. His mission was to develop better storm detection technology that would save lives. In the past 34 years, the company has expanded its products to include radar, storm tracking, weather displays, alerting technology and other critical weather technology used in airplanes, boats and millions of cars through a partnership with XM Satellite Radio.
“We are excited to continue our partnership with Alabama Power,” said Baron. “The investments being made in weather-data collection across the state have a life-saving impact, and the resources Alabama Power provides make these types of technology improvements possible. The wonderful partnership, which also includes state EMA and DOT and others, has already added nearly 80 sensor/cams to the Baron Institute Alabama Weathernet, available without charge to every Alabama citizen via the institute’s webpage and/or the Alabama SAF-T-Net app.”
For more information about the Baron Critical Weather Institute, call 256-715-1962 or email info@baroninstitute.com.