In the last couple of months, I’ve written about the impacts of Hurricane Irene and the Halloween nor’easter on electric service, particularly for people in the northeast US.
It is natural that after a major storm, people express comments and questions such as “We’re living in the digital age – why doesn’t the utility know which customers have lost power? What can be done to improve restoration times? What can be done to keep customers and other stakeholders informed during the outage?”
Utilities have long used different operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) systems to improve storm response. Some of the primary systems used by utilities during storms are Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Distribution Management System (DMS), Outage Management System (OMS), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Customer Information System (CIS), Mobile Workforce Management (MWM), and Business Intelligence dashboards and reporting (BI). What’s changing is not only the increasingly functionality in those different systems, but probably even more importantly, is the integration of those systems to each other.
Integration of these systems is sometimes called “IT/OT Integration” in the utility industry, meaning that different OT systems (SCADA, DMS, OMS) are integrated with the IT systems (MWFM, GIS, CIS, BI, for example). The IT/OT integration permits data and information to flow freely between the system devices, work crews in the field, people in the operations centers, and storm-support personnel throughout the organization. Even external stakeholders, including customers, government and public safety authorities, and regulators, are provided selective access to more accurate and timely information about the numbers and locations of customers out, the number and status for restoration resources, and estimate restoration times for different locations.
Examples of integrated IT/OT that improve the storm restoration process are:
Integration of AMI with OMS
The capability of some smart meters and AMI systems permit transmittal of a “last-gasp” message, or outage notification message, to the OMS when a meter loses voltage. This permits the creation of an AMI-trouble call in the OMS, so that if a customer is delayed in calling to report an outage due to not being home or being asleep, for example, the outage is still noted and processed in the utility’s control systems. In addition, with some AMI systems, the OMS can ping meters to determine if they are with voltage or not with voltage. This can improve field resource efficiency, providing dispatchers and crews up-to-date information on the present location where fixes are still required.
Integration of SCADA, DMS, and OMS
Having a single integrated distribution operation system for these three operational systems, instead of three disparate, independent systems, improves operator efficiency during storms, data maintenance, and operator training. With integrated SCADA, DMS, and OMS, available functionality now includes the transfer of status/analog points from SCADA to the DMS and OMS; the sending of supervisory control and manual override commands from the DMS and OMS to the SCADA; an integrated user interface running on the same operator console, and integrated single sign-on for users.
In addition, the integration of DMS applications in the OMS has proven to improve outage performance. For example, a fault location algorithm uses the as-operated electric network model, including the location of open switches, along with an electrical model of the distribution system with lengths and impedances of conductor segments, to estimate fault location. This can get customers restored faster and direct crews to fault locations faster. A Restoration Switching Analysis application evaluates the possible isolation and restoration switching actions that can be done upon occurrence of a permanent fault. The application executes an unbalanced load flow to determine overloaded lines and low-voltage violations for each switching action, and the operator is provided with a listing of recommended switching actions. The switching actions can also be executed automatically, so that customers outside the fault zone can be restored in a matter of minutes.
Integration of MWM and OMS
Interfaces between the outage management system have the mobile workforce management system have become increasingly mature. This enables improved communications between the control center and the field resources, and reduces the time for radio communications and manual research. Crews can report their status, outage status, update estimated times to restore, and more functions through their field devices. This functionality will continue to grow as mobile technologies and integration technologies evolve.
Integration of BI with All the Different Systems in the Utility
The integration of BI to all the different systems, including OMS and MWM, provide dashboards, reports, and queries, configured specifically for persons depending upon their roles and responsibilities. A set of operational dashboards enables a near real-time display of summary views that support the ability to drill into outage event details. Dashboard sutilizes an organizational hierarchy to filter the date by service center, district, geographic location, and additional spatial or organizational criteria. The outage events are displayed by the Total Number of Outages, Number of Dispatched Outages, Number of Non Dispatched Outages, Device Outages, Customers Out, Priority Customers Out, Locked out Feeders, Active Storm Status, Expired Estimated Restoration Times (ERT), Wires Down, and Configurable ERT thresholds.
The integration of these different IT/OT systems permits storm responders to restore power more quickly and safely than ever before - which means life can return to normal more quickly for all of us.
