Interfaces: Smallworld-based engineering studies with customer information loads
Electric Load Group
The Electric Load Group is a new
object that simply maintains the
relationship between a transformer
installation and service points.
Relating service points to
transformers was considered but
would limit flexibility. Implementing a
load group provides a bucket for
service points that can be related to
any object. One immediate use of
the load group is for CIS records that
do not have a matching transformer.
These records are related to a load
group that is associated to the zip
code of the customer.
Figure 1. Additions to FAME Model
Service Point
The Service Point is an existing object containing information about the customer that
cannot be found in the CIS, such as design demand. It also contains the premise
number of the associated customer, if available. The Service Point has a geometty
field allowing the user to geographically place the Service Point. The geometry field is
not mandatory due to the large number of Service Points created when loading the CIS
data.
Premise
The Premise object contains customer information, such as account number, name,
address, premise number, SIC code, etc.
Usage
The Usage object contains monthly bill information (usage and revenue) for the associated
premise.
Facilitv Link
The Facility Link object matches an old transformer number and division code to the new unique
facility ID.
Issues
During the design and implementation of the interfaces, several issues arose. The
most notable issues and their solutions are discussed below.
| Matching Premises to Transformers |
| Issue | CIS records contain transformer tag numbers that are only unique across an
operating district. |
| Solution | The transformer records converted into the GIS contain the same tag
number as the CIS. The tag number is only unique across an operating
district. Therefore, it was programmatically prefixed with the code of the
operating district to which it belonged (example: 1234 became 1901234
where 19 was the code for the operating district). |
|
Issue | Tag numbers should be, but are not guaranteed to be unique. |
| Solution | The transformer installation has a unique facility ID that is a derivative of the
system ID. The Facility Link table was implemented to match the tag
number in the CIS to the corresponding unique facility ID in the GIS. This
process ensures that a CIS record is associated to a unique transformer.
|
|
Issue | Only 75% to 80% of the customer records contain the tag number of the
connected transformer. |
| Solution | The load process searches the GIS for a transformer with a matching tag
number. If a match is found, the customer is added to the load group of the
transformer. If a match is not found, the customer is added a load group
associated to the zip code. By associating the customer to a zip code, the
engineer is easily able to review only the discrepancies in the area of
interest.
|
|
Incomp/ete Data |
| Issue | Not surprisingly, the facilities data in the GIS is not complete. For example,
a conductor span may have been converted without a size or type.
Although it does not affect map production, analysis failing due to omissions
frustrates engineers. |
| Solution | Design and implement a user editable file to hold default values. The file
lists default values for objects and attributes of facility data. If the extraction
process encounters an object that is missing data required for analysis, it
references the default values and substitutes the unset value with the
specified default. Although the default value is not always the actual value,
it allows the engineer to perform an analysis without manually updating
missinq data.
|
