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Power Solutions

Performance management, optimization, and modeling for the electric-power industry.

Power Solutions helps electric-power utilities improve performance and reduce costs by unlocking the value of digital and advanced analytics.
Decarbonization, affordability, and security of supply are putting stress on traditional electric-power operating models. Emerging digital and advanced-analytics techniques present an opportunity for utilities to overcome these challenges, enhancing performance across the energy chain and capturing hidden value from business strategy and operations. Power Solutions helps utilities transform the way they operate by using benchmarking and advanced analytics to make better asset, portfolio, and customer decisions.

How we help clients

Asset management

Improve performance and reliability and reduce costs by focusing time and resources on the assets that matter most. We transform network data into a condition-based asset-management strategy driven by the health and criticality of a utility’s assets.

Generation-portfolio management

Extract more value from generation portfolios by optimizing scheduling and dispatching strategy. We use machine learning and advanced analytics to determine a utility’s maximum income potential, identify value gaps, and create a continuous-improvement program.

Customer-value management

Identify hidden value pools. Our advanced-analytics modules help utilities minimize lost value from situations like payment delinquency and pinpoint incremental value potential through churn management, cross-selling, or customer segmentation.

Power modeling

Inform strategy in the face of rapid power system evolution, with proprietary power modeling tools evaluating policy, energy trends, and forecasts for scenario analysis.

Featured Capabilities

Utilityx

Power-grid benchmarking

Our power-grid benchmarking helps utilities understand their competitive position, achieve operational potential, and drive sustainable improvements. We bring over 10 years’ experience running electric-power benchmarks supported by a global database of more than 100 individual contributions from nearly 60 operators. We also have additional tailored diagnostic tools for specific areas, such as maintenance and asset management.

Advanced analytics

Our advanced-analytics and machine-learning capabilities help utilities improve operational performance while reducing costs. Our analytics are founded in rigorous electrical-engineering and technical models on which we leverage McKinsey’s extensive advanced-analytics capabilities and electric-power experts to help utilities better predict asset risk, identify improvement opportunities, and capture portfolio value.
Utilityx

Power Solutions By the numbers

10-25%

maintenance and replacement cost savings

$1.5-3.5

million in savings per 10 terawatt-hours distributed

$1-1.5

million in savings per million end customers

Why Power Solutions

Fast implementation

Power Solutions plugs into utilities’ existing work flows while avoiding IT integration challenges. We work from each organization’s unique starting position and tailor our analytics solution to their timeline and needs to help utilities quickly implement recommendations that improve performance and save costs.

Integrated, bottom-up models

Our comprehensive methodologies are built on a foundation of industry expertise, proprietary intelligence, and internal and external data sources. We constantly refine our methods and models to produce the most relevant and valuable insights possible.

McKinsey expertise

Power Solutions is backed by McKinsey’s Electric Power & Natural Gas Practice, which has worked with 450 global power and gas utility clients since 2014. Our experts serve industry leaders globally, including eight of the top ten North American electric-power leaders, nine of the top ten European electric-power leaders, and four of the top ten Asian electric-power leaders.

Our Impact

~$8.5 million in annual savings

in power transformers and circuit breakers for a transmission system operator with 10 million-plus end users

$25 million in free cash flow

generated in the first 5 years for a transmission system operator with more than 40 million end users

>80% accuracy

of failure and anomaly prediction for a European transmission system operator with more than 40 million end users

Want to learn more about how Power Solutions can help your organization?

Contact us

Featured Insights

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The new imperative for grid operators
– Advanced-analytic models and solutions can help transmission and distribution companies boost operational performance to withstand... mounting economic and regulatory pressure.
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A 2040 vision for the US power industry: Evaluating two decarbonization scenarios
– To get a sense of how far and how fast the United States is likely to reduce power-sector emissions, watch PJM, the country’s... largest system.
Article

Analytics for grid decision making
– The energy transition will make grid planning and operations increasingly challenging for transmission and distribution operators.

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