Ever heard about an explosion that destroyed your town’s power plant? Ever watched in disbelief while the local news outlet informed you about a story like this?

These types of disasters, usually due to transformer malfunctions or failures, are now preventable thanks to our member company, Tagup. This past week, the Greentown Team was able to learn more about how Tagup is preventing catastrophic equipment failures via machine learning analytics.

Tagup monitors and organizes information of various different types of equipment so failures or malfunctions can be prevented, companies can save money, and safety and environmental hazards can be avoided.

Although Tagup’s software can monitor various types of equipment, transformers are a good example of why their technology is so important. Transformers are critical machines that connect power-plants to the grid, and ensure the voltage being delivered to your house is not too high or low. Overtime, these machines become corroded and begin threatening breakdowns, or in the worst case, explosions. Not only is this hazardous to communities, but downtime or complete loss of the machines results in losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the asset owners.

The obvious solution to this problem is to prevent failures before they can occur. The Tagup software platform makes this possible by using machine learning to analyze risk and probability of equipment failure. Developed out of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence laboratory, the software uses machine learning algorithms and AI to detect hidden relationships between variables to classify different operating states, and utilizes the ability of the connected network of assets to “learn” from each other.

All data collected is then encrypted and sent to Tagup’s secure and private cloud, and can be viewed via a web app on any mobile device or desktop. The app can be configured to notify users in real time using text or email, so maintenance can be tracked and failure threats will never go unnoticed.

Looking forward, Tagup’s technology will become a necessity for cities transitioning away from traditional energy generation and moving towards varying types of renewable methods. Utility companies must be able to predict how the addition of new forms of energy generation will impact the existing infrastructure and plan accordingly. Data collected by Tagup will be crucial to informing public and private utility purchasing processes and economic models as cities continue along the path towards sustainability.

We have high hopes for Tagup moving forward, and strongly believe their technology is not only paving the way for the future of industrial equipment monitoring, but also for smarter, safer, and more sustainable systems in our society.

Keep up with Tagup by following them @hello_tagup and looking out for updates from us @Greentownlabs!