Data - Yours, Mine, ours
Ted MacKinnon
Manager, Geographic Applications
BC Hydro, 6911 Southpoint Drive
Burnaby, British Columbia, V3N 4X8, Canada
The Company
BC Hydro is the third largest electric utility in Canada. It has 1.5 million customers served over
a geographically dispersed area with 17,000 km of transmission lines and 55,000 km of
distribution lines. It is a Crown Corporation, meaning that it has one shareholder, the Province
of British Columbia.
It requires a large amount of information to operate a company of this size and a large portion
of this is spatial information. Geospatial information is relevant to more than 85?40of a utility's
business operations. We need to know where our assets are in relation to our customers. We
need proper information to operate and maintain the electrical system. The same spatial
requirement exists to operate the business processes effectively. It is important to know where
money is being spent in relation to where revenue is derived.
GIS Information at BC Hydro
Spatial Data
Many forms of spatial data exist within the company. The initial geographic information was
produced in project drawings to construct the plant in the field. These drawings met the needs
of construction, but operation, maintenance, planning and design required a view of these
records woven together. In earlier times these records were provided by manual mapping
systems and later by Computer Assisted Drafting (CAD) systems. There are varying degrees
of sophistication in these systems. In BC Hydro we have CAD systems, a digital
Photogrammetry system and an Automated Mapping/Facilities Management (AM/FM) system.
The Photogrammetry system is used primarily for mapping transmission line corridors,
reservoirs, and associated lands. AM/FM is used for the distribution system. CAD is used to
replace manual drafting that remained in standards, construction, operations and maintenance.
AM/FM
The AM/FM system for distribution is a mainframe based system (Geographic Facilities
Information System - GFIS) with PC workstations accessing it across a province-wide network.
The electrical distribution system from the substation to the customer meter is modeled in the
database. The main applications utilizing this data are:
- map products -- record drawings, operating drawings, maintenance drawings
- design aides -- construction drawings, permit drawings, operating plant alteration
drawings, links to Work Management System (WMS)
- engineering and planning aides
- informational queries on assets and relationships between assets
The Distribution Model
The electrical distribution model includes all distribution equipment downstream of the substation
feeder breaker. It includes the underground (UG) feeder cable and associated ductbank
and manholes; the overhead (OH) primary and secondary conductor (single and three phase)
along with the supporting poles, anchors and guys, the UG primary and secondary system and
the associated civil structures - transformation and services for both OH and UG switches,
fuses and other operating devices. Other information, such as street lights, and special
customers have been added as and where needs dictated.
The land model shows the basic planimetric and cadastral information. It also has an intelligent
street centreline network that allows for location by street intersection.
The database is stored in UTM coordinates and made up of three levels -- electrical, land, and
polygon.
Interfaces
Since many other corporate information systems were mainframe-based, interfacing the AM/FM
system to some of these was achievable and effective.
The initial interface was to the Pole Management System database used in the management of
the Joint Use contract between BC Hydro and BC Telephone for the shared ownership of poles.
The interface provided the ability to create plots from the AM/FM system and eliminated the
need to produce and maintain manual pole maps. It also assisted the pole maintenance
program by allowing a geographical rendering to complement the historical data contained in
the database.
An interface is being established now between the AM/FM system and the Customer
Information System (CIS) to link all the customers to the electric distribution system. This
information is required initially for the Outage Management System and will eventually be used
in engineering analysis, marketing and customer service initiatives.
