From Data Overload to Smart Insights: The Future of Monitoring | Mark Tostrud, Dynamic Ratings

The grid is drowning in data, but most utilities still can’t answer the one question that matters: is this asset about to fail?

At the CIGRE 2025 International Symposium in Montreal, Canada, host Ben Lanz sits down with Mark Tostrud, Global Product Manager and Technology Officer at Dynamic Ratings. With a career that started in the field at We Energies and led to becoming the sixth employee at Dynamic Ratings, Mark brings a rare combination of hands-on substation maintenance experience and deep product expertise to the conversation.

Key Takeaways:

• Utilities are being forced to transition from time-based maintenance to 100% online condition-based monitoring as budgets shrink, and Dynamic Ratings is helping them build the confidence to make that leap
• The next generation of bushing monitoring uses a voltage reference method to measure true power factor and capacitance in real time, not just estimate them
• Connect Grid brings cloud-based, plug-and-play monitoring to distribution transformers and lines, making implementation nearly seamless compared to traditional SCADA
• iBridge couplers send monitoring signals over existing copper wire via broadband over power line, eliminating the need to trench new fiber
• Waveform capture on high-voltage circuit breakers in GIS gives engineers a visual picture of every operation, not just an alarm
• AI analysis is promising but needs clean, well-formatted data first: “garbage in is garbage out”
• Online monitoring does not replace engineers, it enhances them and makes their lives easier by handling the repetitive tasks

GUEST:
Mark Tostrud, Global Product Manager & Technology Officer, Dynamic Ratings

HOST:
Ben Lanz, Executive Adviser, APC Media

EVENT:
CIGRE 2025 International Symposium, Montreal, Canada