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Providing field information to the rescue operators in a storm - hit area
- It's logic. When storms hit,
a utility's damage repair teams need rapid access to data on all of its
assets like pole locations, the size of fuses, wires and transformers in the
grid, and where to find protective devices to make selected areas safe. With
the right information on-hand, the job will get done in the shortest
timeframe.
But there's the problem. In storm scenarios, a utility will draft in outside
crews to work alongside its own field workers to help quickly resolve
outages and restore customer services.
As Ray Fulton, business process consultant at GPU Energy, explains: "Whether
the crews are from a different operating area, region or another company,
the need for asset information on physical plant is the same - it has to be
immediately available, and it has to be accurate."
With two States of grid in the US alone to manage and maintain and a
customer-centric policy of delivering irreproachable service, GPU is now
joining a wave of utilities turning to technology to provide field workers
with a more effective way of gathering asset damage information, and to
improve response times to outages. Instead of reams of paper-based maps or
hastily assembled map books, both of which are ill-suited to working in
arduous conditions and tend to be sadly out-of-date, GPU is now deploying an
innovative field information system to provide field crews with a link into
its corporate networks and direct access to mission-critical asset maps and
job information.
GPU's solution comes from California-based field mapping solutions vendor,
Tadpole-Cartesia. Effective December 2000, CDs of the vendor's Conic GIS
software will be available in GPU's operating regions and in emergency
staging trailers for use on laptops used by the utility's field workers, and
on those brought to an emergency scene by external field crews.
"Through Conic software, GPU is providing head office information to the
"man in the van" and a means to better weather the storms. The software
requires no special training, gives all field crews access to the same
up-to-date corporate data, as well as any other GIS information that needs
to be captured in the field," says Fulton.
"Conic software will also be used to provide the hierarchy of GPU's circuit
design so linemen will know the type and location of protective devices
between working locations and substations, giving them the ability to make
the area safe. With this information at hand, radio traffic asking for
research on facility information or line configuration during emergencies
will be eliminated, freeing channels for other transmissions," adds Fulton.
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