Using a distrubution management system to improve asset management
Hahn Tram
SchlumbergerSema 6399 South Fiddler’s Green Circle,
Suite 600 Greenwood Village, CO 80111
Abstract
Most utilities implement a Distribution Management System (DMS) to increase service
reliability, improve customer responses, reduce operational costs (mostly labor), and
meet regulatory requirements. This paper focuses on increasing the utilization and
return on investments of DMS by extending its applications to reduce the lifecycle costs
of distribution network assets. DMS technologies, consisting of Distribution Supervisory
Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA), applications for control room and dispatch
operations, outage management, etc., are commonly available today. This paper does
not propose any enhancements to these existing products. Rather, it presents a
business process model to extend the benefits of existing DMS applications to collect
business metrics for Enterprise Asset Management, reduce inspection and maintenance
costs, and enable value-based system planning and engineering to minimize capital
project requirements.
The expanding DMS business objectives
The drivers and business case for a DMS have shifted and expanded over the years
since DMSs or Outage Management Systems (OMSs) became commercially available
around 1990:
- Early to Mid 1990s – DMS was designed and implemented to meet regulatory
requirements, improve service reliability, and increase operational efficiency.
The focus was particularly on meeting regulatory requirements and improved
outage durations.
- Late 1990s – Adding to the earlier objectives, DMS was intended to increase
operational efficiency, improve communications both internally within the utility
and externally with customers and the public, and enable value-added services,
such as customer callback and performance-based rates. The focus was
increasingly on operating efficiency and communication improvements [Tram and
Engelken, 2000].
- Today's Focus –Utilities are beginning to extend the business value of DMS
investments to support Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) for increased asset
utilizations and financial return on assets. They also aim to increase the
effectiveness of DMS in daily operations by leveraging the asset registries in
EAM to further increase the aforementioned DMS business benefits. Such focus
is the subject of this paper.
Enterprise asset management
The EAM discipline is aimed at increasing the return on asset investments by reducing
the total costs of asset ownership and by increasing asset utilizations. Before exploring
how DMS can benefit EAM and vice versa, this section provides a quick overview of
EAM—its business model, drivers, and core processes—to ensure that the two systems
and process models are aligned.
The EAM Business Model
The EAM business model has three main entities (by functions if not by organization
units):
- Asset Owner – The asset owner sets investment levels, determines the desired
internal rate of return, defines the acceptable risk profiles, and manages the
regulatory relations.
- Asset Manager – The asset manager is responsible for the effectiveness of the
asset investments, deciding what work to perform on the assets and where and
when.
- Service Provider – The service provider is responsible for timely and efficient
work execution and for resourcing and scheduling the jobs within the budget and
time allotted.
EAM is about improving the effectiveness of the asset manager. Note that the service
provider functions may be outsourced to another company in some utilities. Likewise,
some utilities may act as the asset manager for energy delivery assets that other
companies own. This point is important in designing EAM integration architecture.
The Asset Management Paradigm
Now that the race to e-everything and diversify has slowed, many utilities’ focus and
information technology strategies are returning to the utility core business—running the
energy delivery system. As they have prepared for deregulation and competition over
the last decade, utilities have emphasized and generally achieved good gains in labor
efficiency and customer services. The next plateau in business performance is
managing the energy delivery assets more effectively, not just more efficiently [Tram,
2002].
Observations such as the following have indeed directed many utility executives to take
a fresh look at the way their assets are used and managed:
- At the end of 2000, the top 100 electric utilities in North America had T&D assets
valued at $285 billion [source EEI].
- From 1991 to 2000, these utilities invested an average of $6.1 billion per year in
new assets [source PowerDat].
- These investments earned less than half of what the Standard and Poors (S&P)
500 companies earned [source TK Consulting].
Also fueling the utility interests in EAM today and in the foreseeable future are the
following factors: more limited capital due to lower market caps, an aging workforce,
aging assets, tighter capacity constraints, and a more constrained regulatory
environment (e.g., frozen rates).
