SCE | The Prevention Grid | 2022
When an Ad Agency Saves the Power Grid / SCE "The Prevention Grid"
The era where advertising companies make more than just ads has truly arrived. Deloitte Digital built an AI and AR-powered wildfire prevention system for a power company called SCE. It won Gold at Cannes Lions 2022—and this was Deloitte's first-ever Gold Lion, which makes it a real milestone for the industry.
The problem
Wildfires in California have grown 500% bigger because of climate change, and in 2020 they burned through 4.3 million acres. SCE serves 50,000 square miles, an area about the size of Greece, and maintains 14,000 miles of power lines and 300,000 utility poles in high-risk zones. Workers used to inspect these visually from the ground, but as climate change accelerated, foot patrols simply couldn't keep up anymore. Field photos were uploaded manually, but they were often unusable or unreadable by machines, which meant they couldn't actually be used to make maintenance decisions.
The insight
The real problem was data quality. Ground-level visual inspections have their limits, and photos that machines can't read are essentially useless. The machine-readability rate was only 32%—so how do you fix that? The answer was combining AR (augmented reality) with computer vision AI: capture data in a way that lets humans see it while machines can understand it at the same time.
The idea
They built a custom computer vision AI layer and combined it with AR, creating a system that captures high-quality images and grid asset data simultaneously. These new computer vision tools improved both the accuracy and speed of the inspection process, and made images easier to read and use across the whole organization. The AI automatically pre-filled simple questions within the inspection process—like which assets are present (poles, insulators, etc.) and how many assets are on a given pole—which dramatically boosted efficiency.
What happened
Once the app was fully deployed, the machine-readability rate jumped from 32% to 78%. In 2021, they analyzed 200,000 utility poles and found 800 at critical risk of sparking fires, with repairs completed within 24 hours. Thanks to completed grid-hardening work, outage time on frequently affected circuits was reduced by an estimated 70%. Compared to before 2018, the risk of catastrophic wildfire damage dropped by 65%. Carbon emissions from grid-caused wildfires fell from 128,000 acres burned in 2020 to under 500 acres in 2021. The campaign won a Gold Lion in the Creative Business Transformation category at Cannes Lions 2022—Deloitte's first-ever Gold Lion.
Afterthought
What an advertising agency's job even means is completely changing. From "designing communications" to "solving problems, systems and all." And that kind of work is winning Gold at Cannes. For both clients and agencies, I think this is a model for a whole new kind of relationship. The fact that Deloitte Digital was doing this back in 2022, and that SCE was open to it, is impressive on both sides. And honestly, I can't help but think this is exactly where the future of creativity is headed.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2022
