Learn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner
on 22 APR 2021
in Amazon SageMaker, Announcements, Artificial Intelligence, Industries, Power & Utilities, Sustainability
Portland General Electric (PGE), a regulated investor-owned utility, has been serving the Portland, Oregon area for over 130 years. The company provides electricity to 51 cities, catering to approximately 900,000 customers within a community of 2 million Oregonians. By 2019, PGE recognized that its on-premises IT systems could no longer meet the growing demands of its customer base and corporate data requirements.
To enhance its speed of innovation and facilitate Oregon’s transition to clean energy, PGE opted for a hybrid on-premises/cloud model utilizing Amazon Web Services (AWS). They employed services like Amazon DynamoDB, a fully managed high-performance database, to centralize data access. PGE established a data lake powered by AWS solutions, including AWS Database Migration Service, to ensure quick and secure database migrations to the cloud. Additionally, to enhance energy loss detection, they developed an advanced analytics solution within the data lake, leveraging AWS services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which offers scalable object storage through an accessible web interface.
Furthermore, PGE utilizes predictive analytics on AWS to foresee outages and failures. To proactively inform customers about potential outages and manage accurate notifications regarding estimated repair times, PGE developed a machine learning model using Amazon SageMaker. This tool allows data scientists and developers to efficiently prepare, build, train, and deploy high-quality models.
For a deeper understanding of PGE’s journey, be sure to check out their recent presentation at AWS re:Invent 2020.
Commitment to Clean Energy: The Climate Pledge
In alignment with its customers, PGE is dedicated to fostering a sustainable future. The company aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with its electric service by at least 80% by 2030, ultimately striving for companywide net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. Recently, PGE affirmed its commitment to The Climate Pledge, a collaborative effort of companies, organizations, individuals, and partners addressing the climate crisis and the challenges of decarbonizing our economy. This initiative, co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019, urges signatories to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040—ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement.
To discover how PGE harnesses AWS to realize its objectives, watch this informative video. You can also delve into PGE’s climate aspirations or visit Sustainability for AWS Power & Utilities. This path can lead you to valuable insights, much like those found in this blog post about starting your career after college. For anyone interested in a career in utilities, this event from SHRM is a great opportunity to learn more. Moreover, if you’re looking for a potential job, consider checking out this resource for an entry-level position at Amazon.