Outage management systems can improve customer service
Steve Kearney
Senior Technical Sales, ConneXt, Inc.
1301 Fifth Ave., Suite 1900
Seattle, WA 98101
Introduction
Deregulation in the Electric Utility industry is forcing the utilities in the USA to be more
concerned with the issues of their customers. One of the most important situations with the
customer is during outages at the service location. One way electric utilities can improve their
operations and provide additional customer services is to implement an Outage Management
System (OMS). These systems have been developed with interfaces into SCADA, automatic
meter reading systems (AMR), utility call centers, Customer Information Systems (CIS), and
AM/FM/GIS systems. These OMS systems are currently reducing the average outage restoration
by over 30Y0, in comparison to utility control centers that do not have an integrated outage
management system. OMS technology has progressed into determining "where" the actual
outage has taken place. This has improved the dispatching of crews, provided the utility's
customer service representatives with up-to-date outage knowledge, and increased the
effectiveness of outage restoration personnel. Overall reliability of the electric system has
improved due to shorter outages, and customer satisfaction is increased due to these shorter
restorations.
With this new outage management technology, the utility can also acquire additional revenue by
offering new customer services, such as Outage Alert and/or Outage Watch services. These
services provide the customer with Integrated Voice Response messages to notify them of an
outage at a remote site. Customers with invalid family members (that require electrical service at
all times), or businesses that require power for their operations would pay a minimal fee for this
additional service. By offering these new products, customer satisfaction will also improve, and
the utility will be more likely to retain these customers when deregulation is enacted throughout
the world.
Topics of Discussion
This paper will cover some of the issues that are a concern for the electrical utility industry, and
they are:
- Deregulation is motivating the market place to develop Outage Management systems to
collect more remote data (such as AMR), interfacing that data with AM/FM/GIS systems,
allowing the utility to dispatch crews more effectively;
- These systems must be interfaced with the utility's Customer Information Systems (CIS), and
Integrated Voice Response systems (IVR), to provide a total "turn-key" solution for outage
management;
- More and more states have enacted active utility deregulation legislation;
- Electrical utilities are separating their distribution functions from the generation and
transmission tasks;
- These distribution "companies" are more concerned with customer service, while cutting
costs and providing additional data services for their largest customers.
Outage Management systems allow the utility to achieve a paradox in this industry: cutting costs
while providing better service. There is a direct co-relationship between the number and length
of outages of the electrical system and the customer service rating of that utility. More and more
utilities are concerned with customer service in the new de-regulated environment, especially
customer choice customer. Utilities are benchmarking their Customer Service Index (CSI), to see
how well they treat their customers, and use this index to see how they can improve their
customer service. This index is determined annually at most utilities. State regulators have
jumped on this bandwagon, and want outage statistics kept to help rate the utilities that they
monitor. Some of these statistics are: System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI),
System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI), and Customer Average Interruption
Duration Index (CAIDI). This information must be accurate, and reported on a regular basis.
Cost and Time Savinm
An independent System Control Center (SCC) study that was completed in the early 1990's
stated that OMS reduces time in locating outage by 30°/0, while reducing personnel and
equipment costs by 25°/0. Traditional OMS system's payback is within 1 year, based on
cost/benefit analysis information. Customer satisfaction is maintained, or exceeded from the
previous CSI benchmarking levels.
Several types of data systems are collected from OMS: the source of problem (or the outage),
and the change in status of operation of the electric distribution by the operator (device normally
open to closed). Information is also collected from the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
systems (or SCADA), and the location and status of utility crews in the field. The OMS
determines the consequence of problem from the customers that have experienced an outage,
from the calls coming into the utility's Call Center. These calls are traditional entered into a
system which is fed into an OMS. With the implementation of AMR, outage determination
sensors can be implemented with the meters, to provide additional input to customer sites.
Independent Electronic Devices (IEDs) can also provide outage information, to locate the source
of the problem for (SCC) personnel.
Linking islands of automation together is the main reason to purchase an OMS for utilities.
Funneling data from all sources - Call Center, Crews, Dispatch, SCADA, AMR, IEDs - and
establishing a common database (or "Information Bus") to push appropriate data back to the
users is the main objective of the OMS. This allows the utility company to link CIS, with meter
systems, Facilities and Work Management Systems, SCADA, Engineering Analysis, and
AM/FM/GIS mapping systems to provide better informational exchange. The data is then
compiles and sent to Call Centers, the dispatching personnel, crews, and/or Emergency
Operations Centers, and then to the customers and News Media.
