Energy and utilities rank among the top three vertical markets for AR glasses shipments and total value chain revenues, according to ABI Research.
AR’s ability to enhance workers’ safety and protect equipment addresses the priority on safety emphasised by the energy and utilities industry. Analysts estimate the energy and utilities sector will account for 17% of global smart glasses shipments in 2018. Total AR market revenues for the energy and utilities industry are expected to grow to $18 billion by 2022, with platform and licensing, and smart glasses hardware comprising the majority. Marina Lu, Senior Analyst at ABI Research, said:
“AR enables better visualisation of underground assets, pipelines in concrete, or complex components, which help avoid breaks while digging, detect dangerous leaks, and reduce accidents. Accordingly, employee safety will be maintained along with a decline in errors and total downtime.
As the industry faces a lack of skilled workers and an ageing workforce that will result in knowledge loss, AR will aid field workers by connecting them with remote experts who can provide real-time guidance and highlight where extra caution should be taken. A subsequent benefit is that the information obtained from AR solutions can be stored as a guideline for future work, thus facilitating business decisions and workflow. With AR, employees become more proficient more quickly.”
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has studied the importance of AR to the energy industry and has been involved in several vendors’ efforts to investigate and pilot the use of AR in electric and utility operations. EPRI has also collaborated with Duke Energy, deploying Atheer’s AR platform to demonstrate the AR application benefits of improved productivity and safety due to hands-free data access.
GE Renewable Energy has improved technician assembly time efficiency by 34%, using smart glasses overlaid with digital instructions, ABI said. Upskill’s Skylight platform enables technicians to use voice to identify and locate certain items such as wires, which saves time over reading paper manuals. Siemens partnered with Daqri and conducted a study to explore how AR-based gas burner assembly can increase training efficiency and reduce errors. Eric Abbruzzese, Principal Analyst at ABI Research, also commented:
“Safety is a dominant theme for energy and utilities. Durable and dependable AR devices can operate well in potentially hazardous environments such as those with explosive dust or flammable gas. These environments also have the strongest need for worker safety improvements that can be provided by AR devices.
Real-time environment monitoring, safety notifications, and workflow instruction can ensure safety while improving efficiency – a unique and attractive combination for the industry.”
