Beyond Load Settlement: How AMI Is Reshaping Data-Driven Utilities in Alberta
The Data Shift Every Alberta Utility Is Now Facing
Across Alberta, utilities are navigating one of the most consequential operational transitions in decades: the rapid expansion of the next wave of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI 2.0). Today’s meters don’t just automate readings—they transform the volume, velocity, and variety of data entering utility systems.
And for many teams, it doesn’t feel like progress at first.
It feels like pressure.
Depending on the meter, hundreds, even thousands of new data points can be collected in a little as one minute for each utility meter. IT is expected to store and secure it. Operations wants real-time dashboards that make sense of it. Planning wants long-term trend analyses. Executives want decisions backed by analytics, not intuition.
From Reactive to Predictive: Why AMI Data Is a Turning Point
Reliability has long been measured by backward-looking indicators like and SAIFI. AMI introduces something utilities haven’t had before: continuous visibility into system behavior at a granular level.
With detailed meter data, utilities can answer questions that used to require assumptions or field investigation:
- How is demand shifting ahead of a cold snap for different customers?
- Which transformers are showing early indications of overload?
- Where does vegetation or equipment deterioration correlate with voltage anomalies?
- Which circuits are at higher risk as EV adoption accelerates?
This evolution—from reporting the past to anticipating the future—is becoming a strategic advantage for Alberta utilities as electrification, DER growth, and wildfire resilience rise on the agenda.
Every organization we speak with describes similar challenges in their early years of AMI adoption:
- IT teams overwhelmed with managing and integrating thousands of new data streams with legacy systems and data.
- Operations teams struggling to convert data into meaningful dashboards with clear insights.
- Planning teams challenged with harnessing the power of predictive analytics with new data and new tools.
- Leadership asking for deeper analytics decision justification at a faster pace.
And layered on top of this are critical risks:
- Cybersecurity and privacy: interval data contains sensitive customer and utility information.
- Governance: uncontrolled access leads to duplicated datasets and inconsistent reports.
- Integration challenges: OMS, GIS, CIS, and ERP environments aren’t always designed with AMI-scale data in mind.
Utilities don’t just need more data—they need a coherent analytics framework and a consistent model for how the business consumes data.
How Microsoft’s Analytics Platform Brings Structure to the Chaos
This is where Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, and Azure provide a practical, governed path forward—one that IT can trust, and the business can see value in.
Power BI
- Connects securely to AMI, SCADA, CIS, and weather datasets
- Visualizes load, voltage, and outage patterns
- Enables natural language queries through Copilot
- Supports real-time or near-real-time dashboards for operations
Microsoft Fabric
- Provides centralized governance.
- Establishes clear data domains to separate responsibilities between business units.
- Tracks data lineage and certification
- Creates one unified, reliable data environment for the entire utility.
Azure + Entra ID
- Protects sensitive data with enterprise-grade security
- Ensures identity, role-based access, and compliance.
- Scales to AMI-level data volumes without performance issues.
Together, these capabilities move the organization from to a single data architecture that supports predictive operations.
Why IT and Business Need to Move Forward Together
The most successful utilities we see aren’t simply deploying new tools—they’re redesigning how IT, operations, planning, customer service, and finance collaborate around data.
Microsoft Fabric and Power BI strengthen that alignment by:
- Giving IT confidence in security and governance
- Giving business teams accessible, certified, shared datasets and information
- Giving leadership consistent insights for planning and investment decisions
This cross-functional value is what turns AMI from a metering and data collection requirement into an enabler of utility operational excellence.
The Road Ahead: Predictive Power, Informed Decisions
Alberta’s grid is entering a new era—defined not by meter deployment, but by the insights utilities can extract from the data those meters generate.
