Sense appoints Duke Energy executive Meghan Dewey to Board of Directors. Jul 01, 2026, 09:05 ET Senior utility leader brings deep expertise in customer strategy, innovation, regulatory policy and grid modernization CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 1, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ - Sense, a grid-edge intelligence company partnering with electric utilities to build a more reliable, resilient, and affordable electric system, today announced the appointment of Meghan Dewey to its Board of Directors. Dewey serves as Senior Vice President of Products, Services and Pricing Solutions at Duke Energy, where she leads customer-focused programs and strategies designed to enhance value and experience across the company's service territories. She also oversees customer pricing, rate design, products and services regulatory strategy, and the development of long-term grid solutions through Duke Energy's Emerging Technology Office. "Meghan brings a unique combination of utility leadership, customer insight, regulatory expertise, and innovation experience that closely aligns with Sense's mission," said Sense CEO Mike Phillips. "As utilities navigate ongoing rapid changes driven by electrification, distributed energy resources, and evolving customer needs, Meghan's perspectives and expertise will be invaluable in helping Sense continue to deliver the grid-edge intelligence utilities need to build a more resilient, affordable, and customer-centric energy future." Dewey joins the Sense Board of Directors at a time when utilities are seeking greater visibility into conditions across the distribution grid and deeper engagement with customers. Her experience developing customer programs, shaping regulatory policy, and advancing emerging technologies will help guide Sense as it expands its platform. "I'm excited to join the Sense Board at a time when innovation at the grid edge and customer expectations are evolving so rapidly," Dewey said. "This is a unique opportunity to help shape solutions that not only advance grid intelligence, but also meaningfully enhance the customer experience - making energy more seamless, personalized, and valuable for the customers we serve." Dewey joined Duke Energy in 2023 after more than a decade at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), where she held leadership roles spanning customer care, utility partnerships, innovation, customer strategy, and regulatory policy. Prior to PG&E, Dewey worked for several consulting firms leading business and program development initiatives focused on sustainable energy solutions for government, utility, and commercial clients nationwide. Dewey holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a Master's degree from Portland State University. About Sense Sense is making the energy transition accessible to everyone. Sense's embedded intelligence redefines how utilities and consumers interact with homes and the grid. By partnering with meter manufacturers, Sense delivers software driven by high-resolution data that's vital for utilities to better engage with customers, detect devices, balance load, forecast demand and identify anomalies. Its consumer-facing app makes homes smarter, empowering home dwellers to make better use of their energy, lower electricity bills, and reduce their carbon footprint. Learn more at https://sense.com. Media Contacts: Laura Morarity, Sense Wes Mangum, FischTank PR Media Contact Laura Morarity, Sense, 1 2064898427, [email protected], Sense.com SOURCE Sense

Smart meter app developer Sense helps utilities cut back on vegetation-related outages. Pilot with Southern Company creating warning signal database of anomalies for branches, wildfires, failing transformers and more. Jun 25 2026 Boston-based energy applications developer Sense is working with the utilities of Southern Company to develop grid monitoring capabilities for detecting anomalies before they turn into outages. One area of particular interest is compiling and verifying a database of signals from residential smart meters with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) 2.0 architecture that pinpoint where vegetation is encroaching on power lines. Colin Gibbs, senior vice president of revenue and strategic partnerships at Sense, told pv magazine USA that vegetation-related outages are one of Southern Company's biggest cost drivers, which is not unusual for utilities in the eastern U.S. "A light bulb went off with some folks in Southern's power delivery team who knew about our architecture," Gibbs said. "If we have the ability to saturate a network with sensors, then we would in theory have the ability to identify all sorts of distribution issues. With Sense running on residential smart meters already in the field, we looked to do that without having to physically place dedicated instruments, which is crazy expensive." In 2025, Southern Company, which includes Georgia Power and Alabama Power, embarked on a pilot program to develop remote grid issue detection capabilities for identifying vegetation encroaching on lines at the distribution level using Sense's Waveform AI running on AMI 2.0-compatible residential smart meters. The goals were to identify signals characteristic of vegetation touching lines and to localize particular issues within 100 meters. According to Gibbs, Sense had spent years capturing and studying waveform snippets from its fleet of AMI 2.0 meters out in the field, classifying those signals that indicate faults or anomalies. Initially, this was in pursuit of gaining a better understanding of fault conditions behind the meter in the home, such as a compressor failing in an air conditioner or if there was some sort of power quality or even a safety issue, for the benefit of the consumer. The smart meter returns are continuously analyzed for voltage and waveform behavior using trigger criteria for capturing abnormal electrical signatures. Transient voltage distortions, represented in Fig. 1 of the graphic below, indicate a drop in voltage on an affected line. The signature of the distortion and the degree of the drop is a function of fault type and distance. With this information, analysts develop a "footprint" of a fault pattern that is compared to Sense's database to determine the fault's location, as represented in Fig. 2. Under the pilot program, Sense shared an updated event log with Georgia Power to cross-reference detected events against the utility's SCADA system and operational records to validate event footprints. When anomalies occurred, Sense was able to determine whether they were localized events or part of broader, system-wide disturbances by checking for simultaneously timed signals across regions. "As we start to get deployed on meters, now we have much denser geographic coverage and we can start to see whether or not signals indicating a fault or some sort of failure show up at multiple endpoints and multiple homes," Gibbs said. "If we observe a fault signature across multiple homes, then we know that that issue is certainly not within a given home. It's further up in the system. Looking at how the signals attenuate over distance enables us to figure out exactly where the anomaly is occurring." Compiling and verifying a database of vegetation-related anomalies required lots of physically driving crews out to examine reported outage locations. This is complicated by the fact many lines run off the street and across residential backyards. However, Gibbs says the database now allows them to spot and classify line problems remotely and accurately. "We've caught all of the vegetation-related anomalies with zero false negatives to date, so we know the data science is really, really strong," he said. In practice, this means outages response has improved and the utilities spend less time and money rolling crews on false alarms. The program with Southern Company is ongoing with the next phase focused on expanding the region of coverage and improving the localization of anomaly detection. Ultimately, this distribution monitoring and anomaly detection will be incorporated into operational workflows, generating job tickets for crews. It will also be used to develop plans for trimming back vegetation proactively by detecting contact points before they turn into faults. Gibbs says Sense is working with other utilities and distribution companies on remote fault detection and response programs with a regional focus. In partnership with Pacific Gas and Electric, for example, Sense is monitoring smart meters to develop a footprint database as part of a wildfire risk mitigation effort. Similar efforts involve studying signals from residential smart meters to predict transformer failures before they happen. "I won't call these unlooked-for benefits of AMI 2.0 meters because somebody thought of them," Gibbs said. "But they weren't part of the initial case for the consumer, right? They weren't part of the initial benefit package of having this technology out there. Yet here it is, and it's very tangible. You can point to it." More about