In May 2022, tech start-up Sharper Shape completed its series B funding round, raising over £14.5 million ($18 million) to develop its Sharper CORE technologies.
The CORE technologies – consisting of the Living Digital Twin and Sharper Circle – offer the utility industry a powerline management solution through automated inspection and the digitalisation of data.
Current± caught up with chief operations officer at Shaper Shape, Paul Frey, to discuss the Sharper CORE technologies and explore the benefits of a digitalised grid.
How did the idea for Sharper CORE take form?
Sharper Shape was founded in Helsinki, Finland in 2013. The foundation for our company grew out of a study and the intellectual property (IP) that we subsequently licensed around the automated analysis of LiDAR data – particularly around the understanding of vegetation, such as tree branching, etc. This IP provided Sharper Shape with a huge head start in our capabilities to analyse vegetation encroachments of the electric utility transmission and distribution lines.
We have worked with utilities across the world, providing substantial quantities — over 6.5 petabytes — of detailed data to assist with their operations. In one instance, we collected 26,000 miles of LiDAR, hyperspectral and high resolution RGB imagery for an electric utility and reported to them that there were 5.1 million vegetation encroachments.
How does the Sharper CORE (the Living Digital Twin and the Sharper Circle) operate?
Sharper Shape’s ‘Living Digital Twin’ usually starts with the data the customer already has available. This typically comes in the form of a keyhole markup language (KML) file generated from the utility’s graphic information system (GIS). That file contains the locations (longitude/latitude) of the poles and structures the utility has installed.
Sharper Shape takes that KML and creates data collection plans for either aerial (drones, helicopters, fixed wing planes) or ground based (tablets, backpacks, vehicles) collection. Once the collection team has gathered the data (LiDAR, hyperspectral, high-resolution imagery) along with the metadata (precise locational information down to the centimetre) the data is analysed and used to create the Digital Twin. This twin a high-fidelity digital representation of the utility’s physical assets and their environment. The digital model is then available across the cloud for use by any properly credentialed user. Valuable information including vegetation encroachments and certain asset defects are then automatically analysed and reported.
In addition to this data collection, analysis and Digital Twin creation, Sharper Shape provides several iOS tools that allow the utility to assign work packages (vegetation, asset, and more) to field teams. These teams can see their work packages, locate the work in the field, complete the work, and then document the work by simply using the iOS application to snap an image of the work – automatically updating the vegetation, asset, or other item across the cloud. This becomes the audit trail, the verification of the right work completed at the right location. It also is what adds the Living element to our Digital Twin.
We are constantly listening to the industry and enhancing CORE to add to its capabilities, to ensure clients receive the best service. One of our current focuses is capturing additional ‘live’ data for the Living Digital Twin. This includes incorporating new utility GIS data on wildfires, storm damage, line loading, and more.
How can Sharper CORE help manage a diverse grid without compromising infrastructure?
The Sharper Shape Living Digital Twin provides awareness of both vegetation and assets to the utility’s technicians and engineers, whilst they remain in the office. Our software acts as a force multiplier making it possible for techs and engineers to cover more miles in a day than is humanly possible otherwise. They can “fly” their system at their desk (at home or in the office) as long as they have access to the cloud and are properly credentialed.
How much of an impact would digitalisation have for grid capacity and tackling current strains?
Sharper Shape specialises in creating a Living Digital Twin for the electric utility world. As noted previously, our tools provide information and awareness of physical assets as well as nearby vegetation to inform utility technicians and engineers to aid their decision making. It provides for situational awareness and allows techs and engineers to cover substantial distances, otherwise unachievable. In this way we help the utility to address one of the largest issues facing the industry today, which is the lack of Qualified Electrical Workers (QEWs).
To provide a sense of some of the capabilities that the Sharper Shape Living Digital Twin has provided to our customers, we have outlined some use cases:
- After a large data collection, one utility customer mentioned they were concerned about the number of streetlights on their system. They advised that their records indicated there were 87,000 streetlights and they wanted Sharper Shape to confirm the data. Our data scientists, working with the utility engineers, created a model of what streetlights might look like. After entering the model into our system, we analysed their data searching of the streetlights. Imagine the surprise when the number of streetlights identified and confirmed exceeded 150,000! This is a true reflection of the importance of accurate data collection to ensure decisions are being made on the correct information.
- Due to a safety issue, a utility needed to locate all 4-position cable spacers they had installed on their system. Sharper Shape used their catalogue data to create a model and searched the data. We were able to locate all the cable spacers and report the exact locations to the utility. The problem was solved efficiently and ensured the utility could rapidly resolve the safety concern.
Sharper Shape announced an advancement in the Indian utility market in 2021, could we see something similar in the British, or wider European markets in 2023?
Sharper Shape has a global footprint. We have investors in Europe, the Americas, and India. While much of our work has been in the US market, we have projects in Finland, Germany, India, China, Peru, the Caribbean, and the US. We continue to add to the list of markets we have entered and are looking forward to adding to the list of European countries we count as customers of Sharper Shape.
