Distribution Management System
Jesus Polite Arbea
Cláudia de Oliveira e Silva Varricchio
José Maria Carvalho Azevedo
Abstract
This paper presents the main aspects of CERJ´s Distribution Management System-
SGD, which is formed by products from GE\Smallworld Systems Inc, including
Smallworld 3.1, PowerOn, Smallworld Web and from Power Technologies Inc. – PTI,
PSS/Engines and PSS/ADEPT. The main functions of modules Electric Network and
Cartographic Information, Electric System Analyses and Outage Management are
described.
Introduction
The Cia de Eletricidade do Rio de Janeiro - CERJ is an Electric Utility having a service
area of about 35.000 km² in 66 cities in Rio de Janeiro – Brazil. The company provides
electricity services to about 1.800.000 customers.
In the new competitive environment of the electric sector, the utilities are constantly
searching means to guarantee service quality and employee productivity in increasing
levels. For these reasons in 1998 CERJ launched SGD project in order to improve its
distribution management.
Distribution management encompasses all aspects of planning, constructing,
maintaining and operating the distribution system to meet the needs of customers in the
utility’s service area trying to improve constantly customer satisfaction. The
fundamental activity (major challenge) of the utility is to always provide power to its
customers when they need it and at the lowest price. Utilities are taking advantage of
developments in GIS software to re-engineer business processes
The main SGD development goals were:
-
Integration of the major distribution engineering functions in an unique management
system
-
Creation of an unique electric system database
SGD Features
The CERJ´s SGD is composed of functions commonly used in electric system
distribution. Its implementation was done in a platform that provides traditional
AM/FM/GIS functions and capabilities, supporting business applications that requires
geospatial data, and that allows an integration with other CERJ´s information systems
such as Customer Information System and SCADA.
SGD´s database was built in two stages:
a) Cartographic Database
Cadastral maps creation, including orthophoto and digitized cartographic data, by aerial
photogrammetry of all CERJ´s service area. The restitution scale used, shown below,
varied according to whether the area being covered was classified as being urban, semiurban
or rural.
Rural – 1: 10.000 in 33.000 km²
Semi-urban – 1:5.000 in 374 km²
Urban – 1:2.000 in 1.975 km²
b) Electric Network Database
A complete and unique database was built from the data field capture of all electric
devices (feeders, switchers, transformers, etc) and customers. After this task has been
concluded these information were converted to a specific computational format. The
data quality control was done by randomically sampling some data and comparing it
with its corresponding data field.
Techinical Aspects
Hardware and Software Architecture
The CERJ´s district offices and headquarters are linked via wide area networks and
local area networks to ensure smooth data sharing capabilities. There are about 80
workstations running via a corporate network.
Fig 1 - Hardware Architecture
