OMS as a Decision Support Tool

OMS as a Decision Support Tool

Luis Ordaz
Manager, Energy Distribution Technology
Florida Power Corporation
Suite 400, MAC: HC88, 2600 Lake Lucien Dr. Orlando, Florida 32751

Jay Stinson, PMP
Executive Manager
Intergraph Utilities (LR24B2)
Huntsville, Alabama 35894-0001

Reduce Interription Time
The workflow to restore facilities crosses many system boundaries, thus requiring tight integration to reduce restoration time by critical minutes. The following diagram illustrates the Outage-to-Restored workflow. The steps are described in later sections.

The “Z” Team Approach
New objectives give the study methodology a new perspective. Applying the best subject-matter expertise and management at all levels of the analysis is essential to ensuring an understanding of the current system and proposing effective solutions. Additionally, the team must convince FPC personnel of the program’s value. Failure to obtain cooperation at all levels often causes new technology implementation to fail. If the study team is not cognizant of the users’ requirements, the time needed for decision making and acceptance increases dramatically – a luxury FPC cannot afford.

FPC elected to use the “Z” team approach. Team members are selected for their expertise or supervisory responsibilities, based on a matrix of cross-functionality and multi-layers within the organization. These members are assigned to the project full time. This multi-level, cross-functional methodology is designed to use the interview and follow-up processes at all levels, to educate, capture creative ideas, and establish a solution that is reasonable, practical, and accepted. The solution can then be deployed effectively. This is a peer-to-peer business-solution team, which has the full support of executive management.

Current and Future System Benefits
The functional evaluation produced benefits based on the differences between the current system and the future system. Examining the key aspects of the operation identified 25 benefits of the future system. The chart below shows a high-level example of some of the avenues investigated. Interestingly, only 8 ‘Yo of the benefits were related to staff reduction. Other forms of asset management, as well as revenue billing and fuel consumption, are more critical factors than staff reduction, which has often been the justification for previous projects. Particularly beneficial are such factors as reduced fuel consumption through load shifting and faster billing based on activation rather than the closing of work order paperwork.

A matrix of functions and benefits offered more than 120 possibilities; from these, 34 feasible scenarios involving various technologies and varying levels of data conversion were derived. The benefits were mapped to scenarios, and economic analysis was used to prioritize these on a payback-to-cost ratio. Financial analysis was then used to better evaluate the most effective initiatives. These were prioritized and modularized individually to provide the flexibility of mid-stream corrections or the ability to abort initiatives in which criteria or circumstances changed. Although greater benefits could be achieved with all initiatives in place, each was evaluated on a stand-alone basis.

The following were among the top initiatives identified:

Outage Management System with Primary Data Conversion only
Mapping/Secondary Data Conversion
Mobile Outage Management System
GIS-based Design with Work Management

Requirements. System Selection and Costs
FPC defined its requirements in a way that would allow the team to identify the system that could provide the greatest compliance with off-the-shelf integrated solutions and allow them to develop a cost model. After reviewing the proposals received, FPC selected Intergraph’s solution because of its extensive functionality and the high level of GIS/OMS/CAD integration. The Intergraph solution eliminates interfacing issues between these complex systems.

Business Case. Financial Analysis, and Justification
In building the business case, FPC constructed a detailed plan with quarterly breakdowns for all components over a five-year period. This level of detail allowed FPC to examine all costs and benefits on a refined and accurate basis. It also provides an excellent tracking mechanism, a key factor in the project. Many of the FPC initiatives will affect the “bottom line” SAIDI value. A detailed analysis is essential to meet these goals. For example, a critical factor in the formula for success is using off-the-shelf solutions. The complexity and costs associated with maintaining customized solutions, versus those of off-the-shelf solutions, in an integrated environment made the choice a clear one. The details showed the true value of pre-integration and standardization. Customized components are costly because of new releases in underlying technology and the incremental adjustments required. Combine this factor with the cost of integrating the customized systems at different levels of revision, and the corporate tendency to want a unique system may seem less important. The costs associated with computerizing old methods and procedures instead of taking advantage of new technology are extremely high. Although completely eliminating the need for updating old procedures is impossible, FPC’S project is based on minimizing these costs. This approach does increase training requirements, but these have been included in the plan at far less cost than the alternative.

The chart below presents the stair-step approach used in the FPC financial analysis, and the outline emphasizes the characteristics of quali~ing and justifying the project aligned with new goals.

Justification emphasis has shifted:
Outline of needs and plan
Economic and technical analysis
Balanced financial analysis
Customer – reliability, improved cycle time and response
Employee – job satisfaction, knowledge retention, current state tools
Process - productivity
Stock holder – lower costs, savings, revenues, positioning, and increased EVA
Payback and IRR from Income Statement
EVA and Payback (Net Operating Profit After minus Cost of Capital on
Embedded Asset Base) from Balance Sheet
Careful monitoring and updating of Business Case assumptions
Ability to modify deployment plan based on changing, modular business case parameters.

FPC applied an EVA assessment strategy in building the business case. This model’s requirement for an accurate project plan with which to predict the timing of expense and capital benefits and costs changed the justification dramatically. Applying a vaiue to ~eliability decreased the EVA payback period by almost one-half.

Financial Analysis

The EVA financial analysis was of significant value. The chart below documents the points at which FPC will achieve savings during the restoration workflow. A key factor influencing the areas of benefits is the fact that FPC had already deployed a trouble analysis system. Although this was a non-graphic based system, many benefits of trouble reporting and diagnosis were already achieved. As a result, greater benefits were recognized in other areas. Companies without automated trouble analysis would show a very different distribution of benefits.

Solution
The integrated OMS, CAD, and GIS solution provided by Intergraph meets the FPC corporate goal of reducing power interruption time through tightly integrated optimization of each step in the restoration workflow. A fast, smooth flow through and between each step is paramount in significantly reducing outage time. Functionality from each component is used as the work progresses through the restoration cycle.

The following chart shows the relationships between the integrated components and the workflow timeline. The shaded areas indicate where functionality is engaged and why smooth transitions are critical. Although this paper focuses primarily on OMS, certain design and work management integration issues are also critical to keeping the facilities model current and accurate. Therefore, the chart incorporates the design/work management workflow and identifies component engagements for reference.

The FPC project team viewed GIS as the foundation for the D2K project. The FPC asset database requires a central repository that is spatially oriented and capable of integrating with WMS and OMS, as well as other third-party applications. For FPC, GIS is the keeper of the assets and is responsible for providing asset information to the user community.

One of the key considerations in choosing Intergraph as the GIS and OMS provider was the cost of ownership. In the past, heavily customized systems with cumbersome interfaces were expensive to manage and maintain. Intergraph offers an integrated GIS and OMS product that is configurable for FPC’S specific needs. GIS integration with the WMS product from Severn Trent

posed a more difficult task because the products came from separate vendors. Intergraph and Severn Trent have become partners in offering a unique product integration to insulate the individual software products architecturally, while providing the end-users with a seamless workflow. This approach allows FPC to enhance or upgrade the products independent of each other without having to be overly concerned with breaking the interfaces.

Time to report
Trouble call taking is handled by FPC’S Customer Service System (CSS), which contains the connection between customers and transformers. These connections were previously established manually in a procedure that required using a 14-digit state plane coordinate and was prone to error. Using GIS (landbase and facilities) for establishing these links decreases connection time and increases accuracy. CSS is now capable of handling more than 40,000 calls per hour and passing them to OMS where they are queued for analysis.

Time to diagnose
OMS contains the primary model (transformer-to-source). The previous Trouble Analysis (TA) model was established manually. The new model is part of the GIS in which single-touch updating will reduce duplication and errors. Updates will be achieved through state transactions available from the GIS/Work Management integration. Outages are logged to transformers where the OMS analysis engine processes data to identifi probable cause.

Also integrated into this process is the Automated Outage Detection System (AODS), which provides direct customer outage notification. As predictive analysis is performed, SCADA data is also incorporated. The real-time monitoring data helps refine the prediction of probable cause and identifies events for trouble crew dispatch.

Time to assign (66% of the benefits)
Although FPC has an existing trouble analysis system, the dispatchers are inundated with events to schedule. A restriction in the workflow at this point increases restoration time. Assignment is greatly enhanced in the new system by using graphics, the Global Positioning System (GPS), Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL), and automatic assignment. Intelligent data about crews, equipment, crew location, event location, predicted type of failure, and crew status allow the assignment engine to assist the dispatchers and clear them for crisis-level analysis and assignment.

Time to travel
Travel time is reduced through the availability of intelligent road information, best-path analysis, and easily accessible current land and facilities information. Storms create havoc, and no system can define the perfect route. However, known closures and trouble areas can be noted in the intelligent road network to assist crews in finding alternative routes.

Time to locate (23% of the benefits)
Facilities location and configuration information is critical to making repairs. While most overhead facilities can be located by sight, underground facilities present unique problems. Considerable time can be lost is searching through outdated printed records carried in the repair crew’s vehicle. The GIS information saves critical minutes in the search for records.

Time to restore (11% of the benefits)
Restoration time is determined mostly by the expertise, labor, and materials available. The system provides the capability to reduce record update time and get crews back into the available pool. If additional crews and equipment are required after evaluating the situation, steps 2 through 6 are again engaged to reduce restoration time.

Conclusion
FPC and Intergraph are confident that integrating GIS, WMS, and OMS applications in Delivery 2000 will provide an extremely effective solution for meeting FPC’S future challenges. This confidence is based is based on the following factors:

Committed Team. The “Z” team approach enhances the probability of corporate-wide approval, acceptance, and ultimate project success.
EVA Financial Analysis. This application requires a project plan so that the timing of expense and capital costs and benefits can be modeled precisely. This financial-statement-based methodology ensures that investments are actually benefiting the project. Close Project Monitoring and Evaluation. The analysis methodology used will continue to be extremely detailed in developing all avenues of costs and benefits. In addition, it will provide a complete quarterly plan for deployment and maintenance over the full life cycle of the solution.
Off-the-Shelf Solutions. Using off-the-shelf capabilities will reduce customization and affect the total solution cost favorably. In addition, proper] y developed pre-integration can greatly reduce future costs for maintaining interfaces. State-of-the Art Technology. Geospatial technology plays a critical role in reducing restoration time.
Restoration Time. The integrated GIS/OMS/CAD solution will provide restoration benefits that will affect the entire corporation, including the SAIDI results.