Because of the advancement of advanced IT technology, the utility and energy sectors are facing a tremendous wave of significant upheaval. The rising demand for power in fast-emerging countries, along with rising cost pressures, is forcing this industry to reassess its established business strategies.
Augmented and virtual worlds are on their way to revolutionising and reshaping our industry. AR's popularity has grown in line with global trends with technology's advancement. Augmented reality (AR) is projected to transform the utility industry by increasing operating efficiency, improving customer service, shortening maintenance times, lowering training costs, and decreasing accident risks. Interest in augmented reality is growing in the utility industry, as it is in other industries.
There has also been a lot of improvement in terms of hardware. Rugged mobile smart glass devices, for example, with strong processors, superb AR displays, 4k cameras, barcode readers, GPS, and so on, are now available.
These properties aid in the development of augmented reality applications by allowing the recording of extremely accurate (and hence critical) geospatial and directional data.
The past year has also demonstrated to many the promise and utility of augmented reality for commercial purposes. The pandemic has compelled businesses to do much of anything they can to keep moving forward, including implementing innovative technology such as augmented reality (AR) to accommodate remote workers. These initiatives will demonstrate ROI under stress, which informs and promotes future investment, acting as a jumpstart for a market that has been developing slowly but steadily over time.
Problems that AR solves in the Energy and Utilities sector.
Several challenges currently confront the energy and utility industry as a result of ageing infrastructure, a high retirement rate of highly skilled staff, grid modernization, and a myriad of legislative requirements. The various factors above make it challenging for utility companies to remain competitive in the market.
Here are the top 5 applications of AR smart lenses.
Retaining Knowledge and Creating a Knowledge Repository.
In addition, with the retirement of brilliant personnel, firms face significant institutional knowledge loss. Companies are frequently required to hire new employees with extensive expertise and abilities to fill open jobs. Let's see how augmented reality can help solve these issues.
Employee and Operation Safety.
With employees spread across multiple field service locations, keeping the utility worker force safe is a challenge. The status and whereabouts of technicians are usually only known if they check in regularly. With AR smart glass offers GPS features which lets the backend team know their position/location in real time.
In these companies, security is of paramount importance. A single mistake can result in a significant loss of life, time and money. With AR you can reduce these risks to a minimum. Augmented Reality helps to map potential hazards and threats and reduce the risk of hazards by assisting with inspection, security control and maintenance, making the hazardous workplace safer and freeing the workforce hand to focus on the task.
Employee Training.
Smart glasses can both broadcast and capture data, which means organizational knowledge can be reserved in the form of first-person training videos recorded by experienced personnel wearing smart glasses. These taped "sessions" aid younger workers on the job instantly and subsequently as training material to look back on.
Utility workers at each workstation can quickly access the resources and real-time information they need using an AR display. As a result, errors in the work of new employees are corrected and at the same time training on the job.
Offsite Support, Inspection and Maintenance.
One of the most significant difficulties confronting the energy and utility industry is facility inspection and maintenance. When field employees wear AR wearables, they may instantly access your knowledge store.
As they confront new inspection, maintenance, and repair obstacles, they can refer to information such as operating manuals or paperwork. In the event of a severe crisis, they can communicate with professionals in another place, share physical space, and resolve concerns promptly. This considerably speeds up maintenance and inspection chores while also lowering expenses and saving time.
Reduce Service Expenses and Service time.
Companies can avoid a complex diagnostic procedure for device repair by focusing on correcting AR-detected errors with AR solutions and wearable devices. Another place where AR can reduce service and maintenance costs while helping engineers increase productivity.
AR provides real-time access to complicated technical information and the support of experienced engineers, dramatically reducing travel costs and optimizing the time required to complete a task. In addition, the AR solutions reduce the time it takes to complete field service tasks by allowing workers to instantly access the information and statistics they need.
Let’s Wrap up
Augmented reality (AR) and its derivatives virtual reality, assisted reality, and mixed reality is poised to take off and add significant value to the energy sector. AR has the potential to disrupt the enterprise by making workflows more efficient and safe, as well as workers more productive. With the price of systems and devices have come down, these solutions that enable knowledge-sharing and provide workplace productivity tools are excellent prospects for technology investment.
We help enterprises digitise their operations with an emphasis on enhancing their production execution systems. We guide businesses through the challenging and rapidly changing worlds of "smart manufacturing" and the Industrial Internet of Things. We assist our clients in identifying and implementing industry 4.0 technologies that will best support their most important business processes and the people who carry them out. We do this by providing advice, tools, and hands-on support.
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