# Innovating Utility Management with Sharpreshape - Event: Xpress ’24 - Published: May 15, 2024 - Length: 7:25 - Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/vhLeRtyKcjI/ > The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's > captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms. ## About this session We are back with the third edition of NestGen Xpress from the San Diego Convention Centre at the AUVSI’24. In this interview with Lisa Stannis, Director of Customer Development at Sharpershape, a software company, we discovered the current challenges with traditional operations of the utility infrastructure. The conversation delves deeper into how Living Digital Twins or LDTs are enabling DSPs operate autonomously, efficiently, and safely. The interview also explores how Sharpershape leverages AI & machine learning for forecasting & proactive management. To know more, visit: ===== Subscribe to FlytBase YouTube - Follow Us On - LinkedIn - Facebook - Twitter - Instagram - ## Transcript **[0:10]** hello everyone welcome to season 3 of nesen Express this time we are live from San Diego California it's a beautiful day out there Alber Gloom me but the excitement of day one of exponential has kicked in and I'm so happy to be joined in by Lisa Stannis director of customer development at sharper shape a software company designed to enhance utility asset management and inspection processes so welcome to the show Lisa yeah thank you for having me how are you doing and how has the exponential been so far things are great it's a busy show there's lots of people here lots to see and a lot of networking to do so it's been a busy day right so why don't we kick things off with a brief introduction of yourself and shaush sure so again Lisa Stannis uh director of customer development at sharper shape and uh so what I'm in charge of is sales and marketing uh working with our existing customers um to make sure that we are fitting their needs and a little bit about sharper shape **[1:12]** is that we were started in 2013 in Helsinki Finland and in 2018 we opened our office in the United States um and so today we still have that office in Helsinki but we also have an office in Salt Lake City Utah okay and so what we do is we create living digital twins for uh critical infrastructure specifically Electric utilities to manage risk create efficiencies and just create a safer environment for their communities right so living digital twins that's been kind of an interesting proposition that shaa shape mentions how are these living digital twins enabling drone solution providers to operate autonomously and efficiently yeah so when we talked with drone service providers we realized that they were using multiple tool tools for their projects it could be spreadsheets a lot of manual work was going into this um and a lot of duplication of efforts with those um multiple tools and so we took a look at our software and did some development work to make that process a **[2:15]** lot easier for the Drone service provider but then also give them a platform to deliver their project to their end customer and so what we do is we remove a lot of the manual work we our digital twin uses Ai and machine learning so it takes a lot of that manual processing out of um the equation so they can deliver their project to their customer faster right so you mentioned Ai and machine learning so I just wanted to understand um I've also read a lot about shaash providing a proactive maintenance with AI and machine learning so how does that work and what does that do yeah so uh the company has created uh proprietary electric utility AI algorithms um so that enables us to process the data and ingest it and then provide solutions for the customer so a lot of the work that they're doing today is manual and so what this process does it takes that manual work out of it and it provides a lot of **[3:17]** automation through component detection um some component defect detection so it's automatically showing the risks in the network versus someone looking through all those images trying to find the risks so if you could elaborate a little more Lisa around the manual processes that are currently in today like what are the typical challenges that these drone solution providers face without say for example a sharper shaped system sure so when they are out in the field and their drones are up in the air and they're taking images U of the assets of uh electric utility po say for example um our software will automatically uh remove any blurry image or any image that isn't Crystal um clear enough for them to do their inspections so that when they take the SD card out of the Drone and they upload the images they know right away what images were rejected and which ones were accepted so that way they can go back out in the field immediately the next day or the day after and they can retake those images other processes that we have been told about was that sometimes **[4:22]** they don't get that information until weeks or maybe even months later and so that takes a lot of the efficiencies that makes a lot of sense so um what with a lot of such Solutions available in the market what kind of you know what is that one differentiating factor that uh shop shap has yeah so a lot of automation I mean there's a few but um the automation is probably key like I said uh those drone service providers they have limited time to get the images process them get them back to the customer and so we bring a lot of that efficiency through um that portion of right so um is this primarily for one interesting thing that I had read was around how you can also forecast uh vegetation growth and how what kind of Energy Efficiency does it bring in like what kind of Roi would people see from using the solution sure sure so really vegetation is uh it's around a lot of things but **[5:22]** Wildfire mitigation is probably the number one uh priority that our customers tell us that they need when it comes to vegetation man management and so also when it comes to like the growth modeling and the species detection you can use that for forecasting so once the data is collected you can take a look at it and you can say okay well this part of the network is okay today but we know this type of tree will grow at this height by year and so you can kind of forecast in budget to say you know what we're not going to need to really do any remediation this year but you may want to put it in the budget for next year because you know that vegetation is going to grow makes sense so finally I think we can close uh this uh session so as a closing what do your think or how do you envision this playing out in the future for energy optimization how is this going to make everyone's life easier yeah easier uh you know like I said earlier the manual processes include sending uh people out into the **[6:23]** field and sometimes depending on where you're sending them um the vegetation could be very thick it could be hard to get into to and so it becomes a safety concern and so I think one of the ways that we create a safer environment is um through keeping people uh more on the technology side of things and not so manual in the field um and then also uh keeping that institutional knowledge within the company uh you know somebody who may be looking like towards retirement doesn't want to go in the field and climb a pole why maybe they'll sit behind a computer and inspect images so we we feel like it's a safer for employees and it's also safer for the environment yes I think safety would become a very big aspect when they are going to consider a solution such as this so yes thank you Linka it was wonderful chatting with you today and this is Express nean Express season 3 and we look forward and we'll come back with more such sessions so stay tuned for 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