Graphical Feeder Configuration & Display (GFCD)
Matt Tani and Michael Berkley
Arizona Public Service Co.
P.O. Box 53999, M/S 8705
Phoenix, AZ 85072-3999
Why read this paper?
One truth about Geographic Information Systems (GIS), at least for electric utility companies, is
that they take significant resources - time, money and labor - to implement. Depending on such
factors as:
-
the size (square miles) and complexity (waterways, mountains, roads, bridges) of the
geographic territory,
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the number and density of physical assets (e.g., poles) to be captured, and
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the number of attributes (e.g., height; material) for each asset,
the cost for a GIS implementation can easily vary from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of
millions of dollars - and the time to implement from one to many years. Given this significant
expenditure of a company's resources, it should be the goal of any GIS Project Manager to begin
returning business value to the company - as soon as possible - as a return on the investment in
GIS.
There are several strategies for producing business value from a GIS long before the entire
project has been completed. Since business value comes from software applications that run
against the GIS database, some viable strategies are:
-
Divide the geographic territory into several logical subgroups. Finish one subgroup and
implement applications for it, before moving on to the next subgroup.
-
Divide the database into several logical subgroups. For example, one data subgroup might
consist of just the data required to implement the highest priority application. Finish that data
subgroup and implement the application for it, before moving on to the next subgroup -- for
the next highest priority application.
This paper - in addition to describing a specific application that provides valuable support to
Distribution Operations -- addresses a different strategy for early return on GIS investment.
Since applications represent additional investment beyond the core GIS, another way to increase
the return on the core GIS investment is to decrease the additional investment in the applications.
This is leveraging; that is, the total cost of developing several applications will be appreciably
less than the sum of the costs of developing each of the applications - assuming that each
application had been developed completely independently of the others.
Context / introduction
The context for this paper is based upon project experience during the Construction and
Maintenance Management System (CAMMS) Project, which was initiated in 1993. The initial
goals for CAMMS were to develop and deploy a Work Management System, Geographic
Information System and Trouble Call Management System [a.k.a., Outage Management] for the
Customer Service Division of Arizona Public Service Co. (APS).
APS is a vertically integrated electric utility serving 800,000 customers in 43,000 square miles of
Arizona. (Of course, if you know Arizona, it's also true that 39,000 square miles of APS'
territory have no facilities -- at least, not yet.) About 600,000 customers are in the Phoenix
Metropolitan area.
The Work Management System was in service in 1996, state wide.
APS selected ESRI's GIS product, in part, as it is common to most of the governmental entities
(cities and county) in the greater Phoenix Metropolitan area.
