Driving Operational Efficiency & Transparency for A Utility Technology Provider
Our Clients
Engagement Overview
Our client is a provider of technology and data-driven solutions for utilities, supporting grid operators and energy retailers with analytics, billing, and operational intelligence. As their footprint grew, they ran into bottlenecks across billing transparency, revenue protection, and grid event management—while also needing to modernize their BI and data stack.
TechBlocks partnered with the client to design and deliver a multi-layered solution portfolio. We built Power BI–driven tools for high bill reconciliation, post-contract usage detection, and grid events and alarms, all on top of a modernized BI platform using Power BI Premium and Snowflake. The result was faster reporting, better customer conversations, and more responsive grid operations.
Key Challenges
The client needed to improve operational efficiency & customer satisfaction in parallel.
Billing disputes were slow to resolve, unauthorized usage was hard to detect, and grid events were not managed with the speed and visibility utilities demand. At the same time, their analytics stack needed to evolve to support more deployments, users, and advanced use cases.
High Bill Reconciliation with Limited Transparency
Bill reconciliation was time-consuming and complex. Customer service reps lacked clear, consolidated views of the factors driving usage and charges, such as temperature, consumption, demand, and rates. This made it difficult to explain bills confidently when customers questioned high charges.
Undetected Post-Contract Electricity Usage
Meters that continued to draw electricity after contract termination were difficult to identify, creating a risk of revenue leakage. Without targeted visibility into suspicious meter activity, unauthorized usage could go unnoticed for long periods.
Slow, Siloed Grid Event & Alarm Management
Event and alarm management within the grid lacked responsiveness and contextual visibility. Outages, low battery alerts, and other critical conditions were not surfaced in a way that allowed for rapid pattern detection and response. This delayed issue resolution and impacted service reliability.
BI Platform Not Fully Ready for Scale
The client also needed to modernize its BI stack. Evaluating and adopting Power BI Premium Capacity, along with expanding licenses across Snowflake, Azure Data Factory (ADF), and Power Automate, required a clear plan. Without this, new reporting and analytics solutions risked being slow to deploy or hard to scale across 120+ AMI deployments.
Approach & Solutions
1. High Bill Reconciliation Analytics
We equipped customer service teams with a clear, data-driven view of high bills so they could resolve disputes quickly.
- Designed and implemented a High Bill Reconciliation report in Power BI
- Consolidated key drivers such as temperature, consumption, demand, and rates into a single transparent view
- Broke down costs so reps could walk customers through how usage translated into charges
- Enabled faster, more confident high bill explanations, reducing time spent on manual investigation
2. Revenue Protection through Suspense Reporting
We helped the client identify meters still consuming energy after contracts ended, protecting revenue and reducing leakage.
- Built a Suspense Report to highlight meters that continued to draw electricity post-contract termination
- Applied logic to distinguish legitimate usage patterns from potential unauthorized consumption
- Provided actionable lists for operations and billing teams to investigate and remediate issues
- Reduced the risk of long-term unbilled usage across the meter base
3. Improve Responsiveness to Outages & Critical Events
We modernized how grid events and alarms were captured, visualized, and acted upon.
- Implemented an Events & Alarms solution in Power BI to track outages, low battery levels, and other critical grid events
- Designed map views to visualize event clusters and patterns for faster diagnosis
- Enabled support teams to prioritize and respond to issues based on severity and geographic impact
- Improved operational visibility, helping teams reduce time to resolution for grid problems
4. BI Platform Modernization & Lifecycle Support
We ensured the solutions were not one-offs, but part of a scalable, maintainable BI ecosystem.
- Designed, tested, and deployed all solutions within Power BI Premium Capacity to support performance and concurrency needs
- Integrated with Snowflake, ADF, and Power Automate as part of the broader analytics and automation stack
- Established monitoring and QA practices to keep reports and models reliable over time
- Supported iterative updates and new use cases across 120+ AMI deployments, improving time-to-market for future reporting solutions
Impact & Results
The client gained a more efficient, transparent, and scalable utility operations platform.
Customer conversations about billing became clearer, unauthorized usage was easier to detect, and grid events were handled with greater speed and context. At the same time, a stronger BI stack allowed new solutions to be deployed faster across a growing number of deployments.
AMI deployments supported
The modernized BI stack and solution portfolio successfully supported more than 120 AMI deployments, demonstrating that the approach was scalable across diverse utility environments.
Reduction in time-to-market
Standardized patterns on Power BI Premium and Snowflake contributed to a 23% reduction in time-to-market for new reports and solutions, allowing the client to respond more quickly to business and regulatory needs.
Faster response to grid events
The Events & Alarms solution enabled faster response to outages, low battery alerts, and other grid events, improving service reliability and reducing downtime for end customers. with a 24% reduction in average response time and a 14% decrease in event-related downtime.
Ready to start the conversation?
Share your most pressing challenges and priorities with our team, and let’s explore what’s possible.