Preserving Fuel Supply Integrity at Remote Sites
Overview
One of the biggest risks of operating remote sites is a painful lack of oversight. Manual data collection and system updates also take a lot of time and manpower when multiplied by every site under management.
Picture a lonely telecommunications tower, standing on a dusty plain with scaffolding and tech cabinets surrounding it. A solitary courtier trundles up in their carriage, a technician in a white van on their biweekly pilgrimage to spread the gospel of regular maintenance.
The vehicle stops, the tech descends and disappears into a metal maze. Not half an hour later they appear out of the gloom and depart, leaving the tower alone with its court. What message did the courier bring? What deeds were done in the quiet shadow of the tower?
Unknown to all, or at least to very few, change has come to this quiet kingdom.
The Customer and Their Challenges
Our customer, a telecommunications company for sub-Saharan Africa, has remote sites scattered across the country. They rely on a variety of internal teams and third-party services to take care of their sites. In addition to generator inspections required every 250 running hours, there are also teams that handle regular refueling and emergency response.
All of these people are given full access to sites in order to fulfill their duties and report irregularities, but this leaves the site owner without any direct knowledge of the day-to-day activities. Furthermore, the owner has no way to determine who is responsible for discrepancies in reporting or malfunctions that fly under the radar.
Inevitably, human error plays an outsized role in maintenance, collecting data, and securing sites. To the degree that business decisions and planning rely on their information, there are a lot of potential cracks for time and money to fall through.
Worst of all, it is difficult to filter personnel effectively, and occasionally unscrupulous actors enter the picture. These individuals, by malice or negligence, have total control over what companies are able to see at their sites.
Should a fuel truck stop its job short to save a few liters, or simply neglect to do its job at all, the person on site has full access to the data recording equipment that would tell the difference.
Galooli’s Solution
Galooli’s software platform records and organizes an incredible array of your asset and site performance data. After compiling that data into charts, graphs, and reports, we’re able to analyze patterns of irregular behavior and pick out anomalies.
We are also able to establish thresholds for a range of KPIs, including fuel metrics. These limits can help ensure assets perform as expected, and also help detect outlying behavior like sudden changes to configurations or recorded values. This includes an access log of which individuals access the site, in order to trace potential instances of vandalism or other criminal intent.
With our fully integrated solution, Galooli was able to discover an important error that revealed a trend of fuel theft. We identified that someone had altered the data on the total daily runtime of the generators.
Because we track not only the runtime reported by the generator itself but also the runtime of the Galooli-integrated relays, we found a clear discrepancy in the generator runtime.
Furthermore, we were able to identify the individuals responsible for obfuscating the data, and by coordinating with our customer they identified the third-party refueler responsible.
The customer was then able to double-check the time their generator was operational against the projected uptime based on the quantity of fuel to get an accurate reimbursement.
Outcomes
In the month period assessed, we detected a total of 2500 doctored hours, which resulted in a fuel loss of almost 7500 liters.
Our solution was able to identify and put a stop to a pattern of behavior that could have gone on without detection indefinitely.
While only a handful of events were prevented, this pattern of deception is not isolated to a single fuel supplier and threatens to cause millions in losses over the lifetime of these sites.
Amidst the global fuel crisis, managing generators effectively has never been more important. Fuel prices in some countries have more than tripled in the past 3 years. Moreover, there’s an increasing incentive for fuel suppliers to engage in shady practices to secure their bottom line.
With Galooli’s ongoing monitoring, our customers are safe from any future corner-cutting or deliberate sabotage.
Challenges
- Telecommunications company operating in sub-Saharan Africa, with sites spread across the area
- Site management is a task for both internal teams and third-party service providers, including refueling and generator inspection
- These teams have full access to the sites, but site owners are left in the dark regarding day-to-day activities
- Any discrepancies or maleficence are very difficult for the site owner to detect and remedy
- Filtering personnel is also almost impossible, which allows dishonest individuals to take advantage and slip through the cracks
- If any irregularities in fuel supply or refueling occurred, these actors could simply doctor the data, and keep up appearances that everything is running as expected
Galooli’s Solution
- Galooli’s platform helps to collect and organize massive quantities of data and metrics relating to site performance.
- We can also compile this data and extrapolate insights to help detect and analyze patterns of behavior and discover anomalies.
- Our platform also provides a space to create organization-specific thresholds, to ensure assets perform as expected.
- We were able to discover a trend of fuel theft leading back to the third-party and internal workers responsible for maintaining fuel and refueling.
Outcome
- Galooli was able to detect 2500 doctored generator run hours, which lead to a loss of nearly 7500 liters of fuel.
- Our solution discovered and mitigated the pattern, providing the customer with specific information regarding the responsible parties.
- This detection prevented a continuing pattern of behavior that would have only gotten worse as time went on.
- The customer was able to change the way they organized refueling so that the third-party management would take responsibility for any future discrepancies.
About Galooli
Galooli is a pioneer in the green energy revolution.
The company is blazing a trail in energy management as a service with actionable insights into your operations.
Galooli’s remote monitoring solutions optimize energy usage, reduce operating expenditures and maximize alternative energy use.
Galooli provides a green and future-focused solution for multiple industries and use cases around the world, from metropolitan centers to the most remote installations.
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