Two subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE), an $84 billion international portfolio of energy businesses, and Uptake Technologies, a Chicago-based predictive analytics SaaS platform company that delivers solutions to increase productivity, reliability and safety, announced a long-term contract for Uptake Wind. Uptake Wind's solutions are commercially available and enable wind power owners to increase availability, maximize online performance, and optimize maintenance and site operations for wind fleets located around the world.
The announcement follows nearly a year of joint research, design and development on a predictive portfolio management solution for wind power owners. Uptake is deploying the software throughout BHE's MidAmerican Energy Company and BHE Renewables wind fleets, which together account for approximately 5 GW of capacity. Uptake Wind expects to offer the solution to other wind owners this fall and is developing additional analytics applications across renewables and the broader sector.
"After exploring a number of data analytic solutions to optimize productivity, particularly through actionable insight into operations and maintenance of our wind fleet, we identified Uptake as an ideal partner," said Bill Fehrman, President & CEO of both MidAmerican Energy Company and BHE Renewables. "We wanted software that was more than a dashboard. We want to put data-driven recommendations into the hands of our operational team members, so they can drive business value directly. Given the quality and breadth of Uptake's platform, the cross-industry data science acumen, and Uptake's experience developing and commercializing similar tools with other industrial leaders, we saw them as the ideal partner to help us push our wind fleet toward greater efficiency and productivity."
Uptake Wind enables owners to maximize performance while reducing operations and maintenance costs. It allows engineering and operations teams to quickly discover, investigate and track high-priority problems impacting downtime across a diverse fleet; detect, analyze, and resolve underperformance issues; and respond to machine learning recommendations to optimize production.
"We are thrilled to collaborate with one of the world's largest owners of renewable energy and a forward-looking thought leader in the broader energy sector," said Brad Keywell, CEO and cofounder of Uptake. "The MidAmerican Energy and BHE Renewables teams have deep insights into wind power owners' business problems and user needs. Their expertise enabled Uptake to create solutions that deliver answers to the right people at the right time, so they can prioritize the highest-value actions."
Uptake's platform enables applications across sectors including energy, construction, mining, rail, aviation and retail. The platform incorporates sensor-generated data, massive enterprise system inputs, and external data assets. Leveraging data integrity and applying advanced machine learning and next-generation security, Uptake applications such as predictive diagnostics and fleet optimization generate significant cost savings and improve productivity, reliability, and safety.
"Uptake Wind is the first commercially available product of the broader Energy application ecosystem," said Sonny Garg, Global Lead of Uptake Energy, and the former Chief Information and Innovation Officer at Exelon Corporation. "Together with our industry-leading partners, we are executing on the opportunity to shape and accelerate the reality of a world in which everyone can access dynamic, resilient, and sustainable power."
About Uptake
Uptake is a predictive analytics SaaS platform that delivers solutions in major industries, resulting in increased productivity, reliability and safety. Leveraging partnerships with industry icons, Uptake's platform aggregates enterprise and external data and applies cross-industry data science to produce high-value, actionable insights. Uptake's platform is powered by a continuous feedback loop, recommending impactful actions that are then optimized by human intelligence. For more information, visit uptake.com.
About MidAmerican Energy
MidAmerican Energy Company is an energy provider serving 760,000 electric customers and 742,000 natural gas customers in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota. MidAmerican Energy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy and is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. More information is available at midamericanenergy.com.
About BHE Renewables
BHE Renewables is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy and is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. Since 2012, BHE Renewables has invested extensively in solar, wind, geothermal and hydro projects that produce energy for the wholesale market and for customers under long-term power purchase agreements. As a long-term owner of assets, the company's renewables projects help to reduce the environmental impacts of energy creation and include 1,153 megawatts of wind, 1,484 megawatts of solar, 338 megawatts of geothermal and138 megawatts of hydro. More information is available at bherenewables.com.
Contacts
Uptake: Natalie Bauer Luce
natalie.bauer@uptake.com
847-372-9524
MidAmerican Energy and BHE Renewables: Debora Blume
DKBlume@midamerican.com
515-281-2266
