Implementing AM/FM/GIS at an RUS Electric Cooperative

Overview
The Rural Utility Service is a United States Department of Agriculture program to assist Cooperatively owned electric, telephone, and water utilities with loans, design standards, and quality assurance. Cooperatives are businesses owned by the members or users of the services the business provides. Electric utilities of this type range in size from two hundred to over one hundred thousand members. Aiken Electric Cooperative (AEC) has 35,000 active meters, making it a mid-sized RUS utility.

The following advertisement may fit the search for the perfect AM/FM/GIS coordinator at a cooperative. Wanted: One GIS coordinator skilled in logical and physical database design, computer aided design, GPS fundamentals and equipment, GIS projection and mapping standards, budget creation and management, project coordination, workstation and server hardware and software, and local and wide area networking. Four-year engineering graduate preferred for additional duties to be assigned.

There is very seldom one expert available in all the areas listed; therefore, one has to learn to adapt to the changing demands and make sound decisions using available information. The Internet becomes an invaluable tool in collecting the required background material.

AEC is migrating from a paper system developed in 1959. This is a map/grid-based system that is employed at many cooperatives. The current map numbers are the basis for customer accounts and pole locations. The migration from a 40 year old unchanged system brings with it both cultural and political challenges.

Management at AEC began researching the feasibility of replacing the existing system in 1996. The initial goals and budgets were derived with assistance from South Carolina’s state owned generation, transmission, and distribution utility, Santee Cooper. Santee Cooper has more than 15 years of electronic mapping experience, and along with the cooperatively owned G&T, Central Electric, provides generation and transmission services to 15 distribution cooperatives in South Carolina. The resulting project plan and budget was submitted to AEC’S board and the project received approval in 1997.