PGE Dystrybucja is a company which is one of the largest electricity distributors in Poland and employs about 10,000 people. With its network infrastructure, it ensures stable electricity supplies to over 5.4 million customers, living in a total area of about 122,000 km², which accounts for about 38% of the country’s territory. It has 7 field branches, including those in Zamość and Rzeszów.
The Zamość Branch operates a power grid and provides services to customers in south-eastern Poland, in two voivodeships: Lubelskie and Podkarpackie. It operates on an area of over 15,200 km², serving about 434,000 customers from 27 cities and 141 communes. Electricity is transmitted by overhead and cable lines with a total length of 36,100 km.
The Rzeszów Branch operates in four voivodeships: Podkarpackie, Świętokrzyskie, Lubelskie and Małopolskie with a total area of over 16,300 km². Its range covers 147 communes. It serves almost 700,000 customers to whom it transmits electricity via overhead and cable lines with a total length of 39,300 km.
One of the priorities of PGE Dystrybucja’s operations is to continuously improve the quality of services provid- ed. The company pursues this goal through the consistent development and modernization of its power infrastructure and the introduction of modern technological solutions to networks, power equipment as well as IT and telecommunications. The company’s two branches in Rzeszów and Zamość use Asseco’s proprietary system - AUMS Reading Data Acquisition (AUMS ADO), whose role is to handle all the processes involved in the acquisition of data from electricity meters. The solution consists of a central and mobile application installed on the PSION mobile devices based on the Windows CE operating system. However, over time, these devices used by controllers have faced major limitations, mainly due to their availability, price and technological barriers. Therefore, in 2019 PGE Dystrybucja decided to purchase new devices. Their operation required a modern mobile application. Asseco Poland was chosen to execute the project and the Company’s task was to build and implement the solution in the Rzeszów and Zamość branches.
The project began in October 2018 and lasted a year. The goal was to build and implement an application for electricity meters reading based on Google Android. The new solution was to enable the work on a number of devices using the Google Android operating system, as well as the application’s future development. An ad- ditional requirement was to maintain compatibility with AUMS ADO, so that the replacement of several hundred mobile devices could be carried out gradually.
In the first stage of the project, Asseco developed a prototype application that had to be compatible with the previous solution running on Windows CE. This was necessary for verifying the correct operation of the application on an ongoing basis. Full testing by the Asseco team was not possible without the support of the employees of PGE Dystrybucja, who, for a certain period of time, worked in parallel on two devices - the old, PSION type and the new one, with Android. It also allowed for testing various devices and verifying how they operated in the field, which made it easier to choose the best one.
The application’s improvements and adaptation concerned in particular the areas cooperating with various electricity meters read by an optical probe connected to a mobile device. In addition, controllers’ field work was optimized. The application itself, although adapted to a specific device model selected by PGE Dystrybucja, may run even on an Android smartphone.
The project, which ended in October 2019, was carried out by 6 Asseco specialists, who reacted to the client’s suggestions and needs on an ongoing basis. By the end of 2020, PGE Dystrybucja is planning to replace the remaining devices so that all its employees will use Asseco’s modern solution. The company also assumes further development of the new application in order to take full advantage of its capabilities, e.g. in the area of camera operation and GPS navigation.
Key benefits
At present, PGE Dystrybucja has a modern solution which offers great configuration capabilities not only when it comes to the devices used by the controllers, but also the application itself. It provides greater convenience of program use and increases the security level of sensitive data.
The launch of the new application based on the Android operating system has provided PGE Dystrybucja’s branches with access to a wide range of modern mobile devices - from smartphones to complex industrial devices. Owing to this, currently the branches do not face any limitations related to the choice of a supplier and equipment.
The solution’s implementation has brought new functions, thanks to which, e.g. in case of an anomaly during meter reading, the controller can take a photograph of the measuring system and link it to a specific business process.
The implementation of the project has increased the comfort and efficiency of the controllers’ field work. It has significantly improved the operation speed of the device and the installed application, and thus shortened the time needed to prepare an order to read the electricity meter, which currently takes about 10 seconds.
