Savannah electric - Fast track OMS implementation from a mature GIS
Donna Kemp Southern Company Services 3100 Kilowatt Drive Savannah, Georgia 31405 Todd Frisvold CES International 3140 Harbor Lane North Plymouth, Minnesota 55447 Introduction Savannah Electric had a need and a desire to implement a new outage management system in a short period of time and to minimize the costs. Our previous outage management system was tabular and only analyzed meters, transformers and the immediate upstream device of the transformer. We wanted the new system to be graphical and capable of understanding and analyzing the entire distribution electrical model. Throughout the project Savannah Electric made decisions to ensure success. These decisions enabled Savannah Electric to complete the project from start to finish in less than twelve months as opposed to many other OMS implementations that have taken three to five years. Our previous outage management system, written in 1987 and modified in 1993, was not millennium compliant. In addition, it was implemented on a mainframe that was not millennium compliant. Savannah Electric wanted to retire this mainframe in 1999, rather than make it millenium compliant. Thus, we had significant motivation to achieve our goal. The southern electric GIS Savannah Electric's first GIS system was implemented in 1984. In 1991, Southern Company started developing the Southern Electric Geographic Information System (SEGIS). Savannah Electric became part of Southern Company shortly afterwards. We implemented the new system in 1995. The goal of the SEGIS project was to procure and implement a full-featured GIS system supporting the business and engineering needs of all five of the wholly owned electric utilities that are subsidiaries of Southern Company. Specifically, the design of SEGIS included these goals:
Nearly a decade later, much of the initial SEGIS design and implementation is alive and well. Two of the five Southern Company's utilities (Savannah Electric and Mississippi Power Company) have SEGIS fully implemented and in production; another, Alabama Power, is partially in production; and a fourth, Gulf Power, is currently evaluating and contemplating a SEGIS implementation. The SEGIS design and implementation is ideal for supporting projects like the Savannah Electric OMS. Starting the savannah electric OMS project Savannah Electric had the desire to implement a new OMS in a short period of time. The plan was to implement, rollout, and gain the benefits of a graphical OMS in less than one year. The primary reason for the speedy implementation path was because our previous OMS was not millennium compliant, and resided on a mainframe that was not millennium compliant and which Savannah Electric did not wish to continue to use. Savannah Electric had two significant relationships to draw on to support a quick implementation. First, two of its sister utilities had been working on an OMS implementation for an extended period of time. Much of the base functionality and required interfaces were either designed or implemented. Second, the selected OMS vendor had a functionally rich system and a growing installed customer base. Major milestones to the Savannah Electric OMS implementation included:
The GIS information is fundamental to the OMS. The GIS is the source for
The implementation of this interface included four major efforts:
The model specification process was a learning experience for both the Savannah Electric staff and the OMS members of the model interface project team. The following steps were followed to develop the model interface specification:
To gain a good understanding of the OMS operations model and its user environments, the model interface team had access to demonstration systems, formal OMS training courses, and OMS staff. Compiling a set of specifications on the SEGIS and CSS systems was easy. Both systems had been fully documented. The next stage of the process required merging the CES operations model and the customer information sources into a project operations model. Alabama Power and Gulf Power had already done much of this work, so Savannah Electric just needed to fine-tune it for it's specific work practices. Much of the symbology work had also been standardized, but some fine-tuning for scale differences was required. Upon completion of the above three activities, the interface team documented the interface specification. Once the model interface specification was complete, the formal model interface configuration commenced. Model Extraction The SEGIS system did not support a good model export format that supported the interface to the OMS system so one was written. But this turned out to be a relatively trivial task. The interface required graphics, attributes, and connectivity information. The OMS vendor had a standard open data exchange format specification used for model process import, .mp files. This format supported the complete specification of graphics, attributes, and device connectivity. Here is a brief description of the .mp file format:
The Model Processor (.mp) file format is a simple ASCII file format intended to
support the extraction of data from GIS systems with limited or proprietary export
formats. The .mp file format is ASCII and is easy to read.
Each .mp file will contain a map sheet definition with the following format:
ADD map_class id {
NAME = map_name;
[COORD_SYSTEM=coord_system;]
[SCALE_FACTOR = scale;]
[diagram]
[attributes]
};
Following to the map sheet definition will be the object definitions until the end of the file.
Object definitions have the following format:
ADD class_name [ index ] {
PORT_A = node_id;
PORT_B = node_id;
[diagram(s)]
[attributes]
};
The PORT_A/B specify the connectivity information about the object and is not included for
non-connectivity object.
The diagram section(s) for each object can contain the following:
DIAGRAM [diagram_id]
{
[ HEIGHT = height; ]
[ ANGLE = angle; ]
[ SCALE = scale; ]
[ COLOR = color; ]
[ WIDTH = width; ]
[ SYMBOLOGY = symbol_id; ]
[ TEXT = text; ]
[ JUSTIFICATION = LL|CL|UL|LC|CC|UC|LR|CR|UR | ]
[ THICKNESS = thickness;]
GEOMETRY = {
[ ( x_coord1, y_coord1 ),
. . .
( x_coordN, y_coordN ), ]
( x_coord, y_coord );};
};
Here is an example of the first few records of a Savannah Electric SEGIS/.mp file:
ADD partition d_elec.1019 {
NAME = tile1019|
DIAGRAM
Southern Company Services wrote an extraction process on SEGIS to create the .mp files. This work was
completed in about one week using ESRI ArcINFO AML, and fine-tuned over the next few weeks.
Savannah Electric created a process to determine when changes in the GIS system required model
building for the OMS. DS/0 and DS/1 Configuration With a completed model interface specification, the OMS model interface team was ready to begin the Model Build process. The implementation was driven by the interface model specification and two datasets delivered by Savannah Electric to the OMS project team: Data Set Zero (DS/0) and Data Set One (DS/1). DS/0 was a fictitious dataset that conforms to the interface model specification and contains one of every type of object in all known contexts. All graphical layers were represented (i.e.. background, streets, parcels, electrical). Here is a screen image of the Savannah Electric DS/0 taken from the OMS system: ![]() DS/1 was a representative area of real data. It included a representative area and was electrically complete for a substation. Included was a database dump of the customer information about customers connected to the DS/1 area. The OMS vendor used DS/0 and DS/1 to configure the interface. These two datasets where used by Savannah Electric as the acceptance criteria of the model interface. There were two major and a few minor iterations of data set releases and updates to the model interface specification as this configuration stage progressed. Once the configuration of DS/0 and DS/1 were complete, the Savannah Electric project team reviewed the configured Model Build process and the resulting maps built from DS/0 and DS/1. This review process verified the OMS displays matched those of the GIS, verified the correct symbology was used, and verified the electrical modeling was correct (energization, phasing, device statuses). Again, this took a few iterations before Savannah Electric accepted the Model Build interface process. The process starting with the specification to the acceptance of the Model Build interface process was less than three months. Model Interface Delivery and Rollout When the DS/0 and DS/1 had been accepted, the Savannah Electric staff (1 person) was trained on the Model Build process using DS/0 and DS/1. Once trained, the Savannah Electric staff took delivery of the Model Build process and installed a Model Build process on site in Savannah Electric in preparation for the building of the complete model. Next each tile in the Savannah Electric coverage was built, viewed and QAed, data or process errors reported and corrected, and the tiles rebuilt until no significant problems remained in order to support the operations environment. The process of building, QA-ing, and cleaning up the data took about three months for the entire Savannah Electric operating area. OMS user environment implementation The OMS user environment specification defines the OMS system from the user perspective including OMS behavior, visualization, and interaction. Savannah Electric understood that this specification needed to be as close to the OMS standard product offering as possible because any special or custom work required here can cost a lot of money and time to implement. Savannah Electric did not wish to waste either. Savannah Electric also understood that the OMS system was highly configurable and that many significant changes could be made with minor tweaks to some data files, so they weren't 'digging themselves into a hole' if some decisions had to be reversed at latter steps in the process. As a result, Savannah Electric went with the standard OMS product configuration and used the configuration and interfaces from one of Savannah Electric's sister utilities as a base from which to start. As a result, Savannah Electric had a working OMS user environment in about one month from the Model Build acceptance. Savannah Electric was told by the OMS vendor that this process typically take three to six months to implement. Customer information systems integration The Savannah Electric OMS requires integration with the Southern Company Customer Information System (CSS) to:
Staff training and preperation for online production Savannah Electric did not have the resources to run parallel with it's current system, so it was deemed very important that the main trouble control operators have enough practice time in a test environment so that they could easily assume the roles required upon implementation into production. Unfortunately, Savannah Electric was ready to start training right during the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday time. Thus the initial 2 months of training time allotted was lengthened into three months. Savannah Electric also decided during this time period to implement the production system on a platform shared with Georgia Power Company, another sister company, who was implementing their version of the same OMS at about the same time. This gave Savannah Electric a much faster system for about the same amount of money that would have been spent of a server dedicated just to Savannah Electric. This last minute change in hardware did delay the implementation another month, so on March 15, 1999 the production system was started. Summary Minor changes have been implemented since Savannah Electric has gained on-the-job experience with the application. We met our goal of implementing the system in time for the millenium, with enough time to spare to work on other auxiliary applications that also had to be removed from the mainframe. And furthermore, we had everything in place just in time for both our second Storm of the Century within 5 years that occurred in June, and for our brush with Hurricane Floyd, that caused much of Savannah to evacuate in September. Our previous Outage Management System would have been "flooded" by either of these storms. | ||
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