Case Study: Brunswick EMC achieves actionable AMI insights and faster outage response with IFS Smart Grid Visualization

IFS and Brunswick EMC See a New Way to Look at AMI Data

Brunswick EMC (est. 1939) is the second largest electric co-op in North Carolina and the 35th of 851 co-ops in the U.S., serving about 89,000 members. After deploying AMI smart meters in 2012, the co-op faced a surge of meter data—especially momentary outage (“blink”) counts and voltage irregularities—that existing reports couldn’t visualize or put into operational context. BEMC spent 3–4 months scoping options and sought a mature partner to turn raw AMI feeds into timely, actionable intelligence.

BEMC collaborated with IFS (building on an NRTC/IFS relationship dating to 2009) to develop IFS Smart Grid Visualization, overlaying real‑time AMI and meter alerts on map-based GIS and tying into IFS AVL (vehicle locations planned to update every minute). The solution lets crews pinpoint root causes, correlate outages with meter and customer data, shorten outage durations, improve workforce safety and increase AMI ROI—an initiative accelerated by lessons from a Valentine’s Day ice storm. As BEMC’s David Adams says, the project “is ahead at 100 miles per hour!”

Brunswick EMC

David Adams

Manager of Information Services