Interfacing to outage management systems
Of increasing relevance to the deregulated environment where a goal is customer retention is the
provision for restoration callbacks and status callbacks. The status and restoration callback is
typically implemented through the IVR. The status callback provides a customer with any updates in
the change in status of the outage. The restoration callback provides both the utility and the customer
with verification that the outage has been restored.
A common interface that is often spoken of but rarely implemented is an interface between the OMS
and an alphanumeric paging system. The thought is that the major account representatives will be
proactively supplied with information about major client outages in real time. In this manner, the
account representative can provide the necessary status information to the customer so that they can
counsel the customer about mitigating the potential damage associated with the outage.
Reporting Systems Interface
The advent of commercial reporting packages as well as Internet/Intranet reporting mechanisms has
facilitated the dissipation of outage information. It is recommended that unreviewed information
should not be distributed beyond the enterprise and that current outage and historical statistics be
reported for a limited internal distribution. In order to avoid performance issues on the actual OMS
production server, it is recommended that a separate report server be implemented and that a batch
interface move historical and current data to the reporting server as frequent as five-minute intervals.
The batch mode interface should encompass at a minimum the following:
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IEEE reliability indices
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Current and historical outages by political or geographical boundaries
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Current and historical outages by utility defined districts
Interfaces to be prioritized
The prioritization of the remaining interfaces is greatly determined by the presence of external
systems. If the additional systems are in place, the cost of the interface is typically easily justified by
the benefits brought about by its implementation. The most sophisticated interface addressed is
typically the interface to MWM or WMS. It becomes difficult as embedded OMS functionality of
crew management is brokered to another system. Within the systems to be prioritized, a utility must
identify its own deployment decisions based on operational requirements.
Interfaces to Crew and Work-Related Systems
At the present time, a weakness of OMS is the crew management functionality. A way to strengthen
the crew management functionality associated with the OMS is to provide a tight integration to a
MWM for short duration work or emergency response work and to a WMS for long duration work or
referral to a construction crew. Development of this group of interfaces is complicated because it
requires customization to the commercially available OMS in order to handoff work to the external
system and receives crew update information from the external system. A common crew database that
keeps track of not only crew availability and skills but also equipment, can be interfaced as well to
provide the OMS operator a more representative portrait of the available tools to assist in the
restoration effort.
Interfaces to vehicle location systems are not widely implemented. This is possibly due to the
political ramifications associated with implementing a global positioning system in vehicles.
Interfaces to Operations and Engineering Analysis
Two interfaces that are often viewed as essential but rarely implemented include the uni- or
bidirectional SCADA interface and the interface to engineering analysis. The implementation of a
uni-directional SCADA interface is a relatively risk free undertaking and can bring benefits to the
OMS operators. Analog and digital status can be polled on a predetermined interval. Due to safety
and reliability concerns, bidirectional interfaces are rarely implemented. Some incentive exists for an
interface to be developed between the OMS and an engineering analysis application to permit the
engineer to perform an analysis on the current status of the system. While the implementation of the
interface from OMS to the engineering analysis system is not challenging from a technical
perspective, it is not typically justified from a business perspective.
A utility can leverage PMUs or suitably equipped automated meters to provide the OMS operator
with intelligence beyond the information of the D-SCADA system. While utilities are often reluctant
to implement PMUs, if they are in place at a utility they can be employed to assist the OMS operator
in determining which protective device is associated with an outage and to verify that the crews have
completed the restoration of an outage. The interface is typically implemented as a uni-directional
interface from the PMU server and the OMS.
