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Multiply the Benefits of Outage Management by Integrating with Other Systems
Robert L. Trotter
Executive Consultant
356 West Ash Avenue
Decatur, IL 62526
Tel: 217-877-3759;
Email: trotter@logica.com
Robert L. Trotter
Executive Consultant
356 West Ash Avenue
Decatur, IL 62526
Tel: 217-877-3759;
Email: trotter@logica.com
Mandates such as Customer Choice have altered the focus of utility regulators from the review of mundane rate cases to involvement in the reliability of service being supplied to energy consumers. Energy distribution companies are today, or soon may be, delivering energy to customers that are owned by third parties. Consumers, regulators, and third parties will increasingly exert pressure for timely outage resolution. A small, localized outage now represents a public relations issue. Outages associated with a significant weather-related disaster such as an ice storm or hurricanes create a highly visible news event. Whether the problem is small or large, many different parties will expect energy distributors to treat every outage event in a reliable, structured and cost-effective manner.
How can an energy distribution company be sure it has the right tools and processes to manage outage restoration? First, the organization needs to recognize the benefits that such tools and process improvements can make. Such as:
- Reduce recovery time through the most effective use of resources
- Reduce operational costs with efficient planning and accurate reporting of completed restoration work
- Increase customer satisfaction by restoring service sooner
- Build customer confidence by responding reliably to each event
This is a good point to discuss how utilities look at outages and the processes that are used to restore service. Many utilities have different processes depending on size, location and type of outage to the electrical system. There are, however, some common things that apply to most of the utilities. There are generally three categories of outages as defined by utilities. They are:
- Small outages handled in a routine day to day manner
- Intermediate outages that may require movement of resources
- Large system outages that require resources from outside the utility.
Small Outages
Small outages are those that are handled on a daily basis by the people and equipment that are on hand in the local district. These outages are often single or a few customers. The utility receives a call from one or more of the customers and determines the probable cause and dispatches resources to restore the service. This can also include a number of outages that are caused by system failures or local thunderstorms. Some utilities use this category to define outages of up to as many as 20,000 customers.
Intermediate outages
A second category that some utilities use is intermediate outages. These often include outages of between 20,000 and 100,000 customers. In these situations the local district usually cannot handle the outage restoration without help from outside their district. Many times the management of the restoration is elevated to a regional or sometimes to the corporate level. The decision process of when to switch from local control to a higher level is impacted by the need to move resources from one location to another to help with the restoration. The impact of moving resources from one district to another is an important decision that is usually made at a level above the district.
Large system outages
Large storm outages are caused by events like hurricanes, ice storms and large thunderstorm fronts moving through an area. Outages of this type may be in the range of over 100,000 customers out and cover a wide geographic area. The resources required to restore these outages include in-house crews, in-house contractors, outside contractors and resources from other utilities. Restorations of this size are managed on a corporate wide basis. The usual outage management systems, which analyze outages and help to locate the probable outage cause, are not effective for these types of storms since there are so many problems at the electrical circuit level.
While major storms may be the reason for companies to investigate tools that will help with the decision processes, they only happen a few times per year. The average may be 1 to 3 major storms per year. Intermediate storms happen 10 to 15 times per year and may provide a better justification for the development of advanced decision-making tools. In both these cases decisions are made about the movement of internal crews or importing crews from outside the utility. There is a large sum of money at stake each time the decision is made to import crews from outside.
What we have described here is a generic division of the different outage levels encountered by various utilities. It is important to note that not everyone is involved with hurricanes or ice storms. Each company has to develop and use the process that fits their particular situation. That is why it is so important to start by evaluating the processes used and then develop systems that support the correct processes.
The Process of Managing Storm Restoration
The following process is an overview of a model that could be used to manage and restore outages associated with major storms:
Model
The activities in the Modeling step of the process are focused on preparing for both the assessment and restoration efforts that will be necessary to restore outages that occur as a result of a storm. Models of what to do and how to do it are often in the heads of experienced personnel. Past storms are often used as references for how to handle future storms; however, historical data is often not readily available.
Assess
The activities of the Assessment step are focused on assessing the scope of the outage. In the case of large outages a ‘macro’ assessment requires that patrols go into the impacted areas to determine the scope of the damage and report it back to the storm center. They perform a drive-by to collect the information and report specifics such as the number of poles down, which provides an outage-by-outage assessment of the damage. Systems such as SCADA are also used as input to the assessment process.
Deploy
The activities of the Deployment step are focused on getting the resources, including patrollers, repair crews and support personnel, ready for when the storm hits and ready for performing the assessment and restoration work. Support personnel are deployed to run the outage management system.
Restore
The activities of the Restore step are focused on the planning and execution of the day-today work and related restoration activities. Planning is performed for 1 day at a time. Patrolling (micro assessment) is performed on a selected area to determine the work that should be planned for tomorrow. Work packages are scripted for an entire day. Repair crews are assigned to work packages along with the needed materials and other resources
Communicate
Communication is required during each step of the process to both internal and external organizations. With some of the technology available today crews can communicate by using terminals in the vehicles. This frees up the voice channels for safety related communication.
Critique
A critique of the Storm Restoration process and results includes a post storm review where lessons learned are identified and documented. Lessons learned include those efforts and results that were good and those that weren’t so good. The review considers the efficiency of the efforts including preparedness, assignment of resources, logistics and problems. As part of this phase, there is often a report to the Public Service Commission.
The goal of an improved process should be to get more customers restored faster. This means an outage curve like the one shown in the following figure will change to show an increased rate of repair during the initial efforts of the restoration process. Without doing something to storm proof the electrical system, the front of the curve would remain the same as it is now. The area where the opportunities are is in the restoration period.
FIGURE 1 – STORM OUTAGE CURVE
Additional considerations for the process of outage restoration for a storm include:
- Logistics of deploying crews. Can’t scale up what is typically done. Don’t know how many people are needed, etc.
- Too much information to manually deal with
- Need to make transition from day-to-day to a big event
- Need to make it easy to implement good decisions
- Regional considerations.
In the restoration process information is used from several of the company’s systems and databases. If each of these systems and databases operates independently, there is a need to communicate the information from each system and to input the data that is returned. One way to get significant improvements in the outage restoration process is to integrate these systems. The diagram shown in Figure 2 shows the systems that are usually involved in outage restoration.
Figure 2
There are three key solution components to an integrated outage management solution. They are:
- The systems that are brought together to support outage management and service restoration,
- An integration approach for binding the systems into one architecture, and
- A roadmap for the various processes involved in the solution. In developing the solution, the company needs to define those processes and systems that will be included and determine if some are in place, some may be implemented now and some will be implemented at a later date.
- Outage Management System (OMS)
- Customer Information System (CIS)
- Mobile Dispatch System (MDS)
- Geographic Information System (GIS)
- Work Management Information System (WMIS)
- System Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA)
- And in some cases mobile computing
Outage Management System (OMS)
The outage management system analyses outages as they are received and helps determine the probable location of the cause of the outage. The system depends on a connective model and associated business rules to predict the location or cause of the fault. It tracks customer calls and SCADA information and then groups single or multiple calls into discrete incidents, based on predefined business rules.
Geographic Information System (GIS)
The Geographic Information System is the usual location for storing the base connectivity model of the electrical system. This normal connectivity model is copied to the Outage Management System on a regular basis or when there has been significant change to the model. This means that the design model of the system is maintained in one location (GIS). This increases accuracy and eliminates nearly all the time required to transfer the connective information to the OMS. In many cases this can eliminate the need for two or more full time clerical people.
Customer Information System (CIS)
In most companies the information about individual customers is stored in the Customer Information System (CIS). These systems are the source of information about each customer and include such things as location, type of customer, and some information about the circuit that the customer is attached to. The CIS contains the business information about the customer. It is the primary tool of the call center and is used to record outage calls. These are then sent to the OMS.
Work Management Information System (WMIS)
The Work Management Information System (WMIS) is focused on new construction and system betterment – engineered work. However within the Asset Management framework WMIS has been expanded to support maintenance work orders, service work, outage work, etc. A modern Work Management Information System manages virtually all the work the utility does. The WMIS systems are often large, enterprise systems that interface and/or integrate with most of the major existing distribution systems. The Work Management System becomes responsible for managing effectively and consistently all the work that the distribution company performs. In the case of restoring power to customers in an outage situation we have found that WMIS is an effective tool for reporting costs and time associated with outage restoration.
Mobile Dispatch System (MDS)
The Mobile Dispatch System is used to route and dispatch the crews to work locations. These systems evaluate the current location of the crew and the best route to get to the new work location. They also take into consideration the current work assigned, the priority of the work and the capability of the crew.
Mobile Computing
Mobile computing brings to the field the asset management data and records the results of the inspection or maintenance activity. The field is where the work is done and automating the field user eliminates the need for paper records and clerks to transcribe the paper records. It increases the accuracy of the data since the user enters the data as the work is being done. It also provides the associated data, such as map directions and optimized routes, schematics, substation diagrams etc. Using Mobile Computing also facilitates very timely reporting of work in the field, thus keeping information more current and accurate. Some of the systems can be used to reduce the amount of voice communications thus leaving it available for the most important needs.
SCADA Systems
SCADA Systems are used to control the distribution and transmission system. They have the capability to help the system operator operate the system by allowing remote switching of electrical system components. The SCADA system also acquires data on the system operation and supplies it to the system operators. It is used to make decisions about switching and controlling the load on the system. In an outage situation, information can be supplied to the OMS and used to help analyze outages and their probable cause. If this system is integrated with the outage management system it can be vital in helping to analyze the cause and location of an outage.
EAI Integration Components
Another key component of the solution is Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), which is the approach used to bind the components of integrated solution together into a single architecture. EAI technology provides an infrastructure to deliver new strategic business solutions by combining existing applications with new systems, custom applications, and off-the-shelf applications. EAI replaces multiple custom interfaces between systems with a single, logical layer of standardized interfaces.
Figure 3
Figure 3 Figure 3 shows an approach to an EAI which combines a messaging backbone with a service-oriented architecture to streamline the integration of disparate applications. The key to EAI is message driven or event driven solutions that enable integration of disparate applications. The EAI architectural approach applies a component-based methodology where messaging and events are the mediums that bind all the enterprise level applications irrespective of their platform or architecture. This is a technological approach that reduces risk and enables rapid implementation in a fast moving changing environment.
Discussion of Benefits
There are a number of benefits to integrating OMS with other systems. It should be done after reviewing and changing the processes of restoration. We will discuss some of the potential benefits of an integrated outage management system. The diagram in Figure 4 shows how the systems might be linked.
The GIS has two benefits for managing outages. They are to develop the steady state connective model and to help with the geography needed to locate the outage and route crews. An interface means that the model can be transferred on a planned basis and eliminate the task of inputting the model to the outage management system. The operating model is usually kept in the outage management system since it is being changed in a near real time mode.
The call center personnel use the CIS to track such things customer name, location, phone number, billing information etc. This information is important when taking outage calls. Some of the information in this system may be shared with the outage management system. The people in the call center usually take the calls from the customer. If the CIS and OMS systems are linked the calls can be automatically fed to the outage management system and eliminate the clerical job of inputting the information. This eliminates creating manual trouble tickets.
When a call is received in the call center it is relayed to the operations center where the outage management system is used to analyze the outage, determine the location, and predict the interrupted device. The outage management system uses a connective model and a set of business rules to make the analysis and determine the most likely cause and location of the outage.
Figure 4
The information on an incident is sent to dispatch. Dispatch will send a repair crew to the location. Whom they send depends on what the nature of the outage is, who is located near by and who is equipped to handle the probable problem.
After the crew goes to the site of the outage they can report back to dispatch on the time they arrived, the nature of the trouble and an estimated time to repair. If they can fix the problem, they do so and report to dispatch that they have completed the repair and have restored power to the customer. If they have a field computing device they will use it to report the status as the work progresses. In cases where a temporary fix is completed and a permanent fix is needed, a new work request ca be initiated from the field. This means that it gets into the work queue and will not be forgotten in the future.
With the integrated systems, all the systems that need information about the outage status can be updated automatically when the person in the field reports status. This means that everyone has the latest information in real time. This will improve customer response and improve the quality of decisions about further restoration steps.
List of benefits
There are a number of benefits that may be realized from integrating the various systems discussed above. Some of these include changing the processes used to respond to outages. These are examples of some of the benefits that may be realized by individual company. A partial list of some of the potential benefits include:
- Reduced cycled time for completing the restoration
- Dispatch work in a more efficient manner
- Tracking of the progress of the outage restoration as it is occurring
- Report restoration to all parties from the field as soon as it is restored.
- Update the outage information in the OMS automatically
- Use communication that does not interfere with voice
- Reduce the amount of voice traffic during the outages
- More up to date estimates of the time to restoration
- Reduce clerical cost of imputing data that is received from the various sources
- Track costs automatically
- Initiate follow-up work from the field at the time of reporting service restored
- Plan follow-up work as regular future work
- Improve indices such as CADI and SAIFI.
The opportunity to improve service and reduce outage costs is greatly enhanced by integrating the processes and systems used to support restoration of power. While these systems individually improve the utility’s ability to restore power, even greater improvement can be realized if they are integrated with other asset and resource management systems such as CIS, WMIS, GIS, SCADA, mobile computing, and dispatch systems. An integrated system can reduce the paper work, improve the outage restoration cycle, reduce the overall cost of power restoration, and assist with power restoration decisions. An integrated system can also reduce the amount of voice communication needed during the restoration, reduce costs and improve the outage indices. Evaluating the outage restoration processes and implementing systems that support those processes can achieve the most benefits.