With AMI deployment comes the benefit of having real-time information. New and advanced outage management systems (OMS) collect automatic messages for alarms and outages. But as utility companies adjust to the advanced levels of maintenance that come with AMI, AMR and OMS, do they have field operations, dispatch teams and call centers ready for all of this data?

This article highlights the Outage Management Systems education session at Autovation 2011 Monday, Sept. 26.

DTE Energy has been working to integrate AMI into its OMS agenda, starting with internal workshops, which explain the benefits of OMS for utilities:

• Obtain early outage detection.
• Receive notification of momentaries.
• Receive improved restoration information.
• Send the right crew the first time.
• Reduce okay on arrivals (OKA).
• Prevent/ reduce customer callbacks.
• Detect trouble behind trouble.
• Improved customer satisfaction.
• Reduce call center volume

Bob Sitkauskas, DTE Energy manager of AMI, reviewed DTE’s implementation of AMI data into their outage systems and the use of their Complex Event Processor (CEP).   Items to be considered in the implementation include:

1. Collection Engine
2. AMI/MDM
3. Enterprise Service Bus
4. Complex Event Processor (CEP)
5. Outage Processor Interface (OPI)

The CEP successfully filtered out over 12,000 momentaries incorporating the “brother/ sister” concept in CEP where PONs received after 10 minutes are matched against PRNs (Power Restoration Notification) received on the same transformer in the previous two hours. If found, the late PONs are dropped to avoid creating an outage and an erroneous field visit

The advanced OMS also identifies problem meters in the field and intentional interruptions that were not properly reported by field personnel.

Although the integration has proven successful for DTE Energy, Sitkauskas outlined several challenges that come with interfacing to a legacy OMS. For example, the CEP could not handle the volume of PONs in a timely manner. In addition:

• Work that was planned and scheduled through DTE’s customer service billing was not processed through the CEP and into OMS resulting in false outages.
• Electricians were performing work for customers which required them to remove the meter, thus resulting in an outage.
• Line crews were performing intentional interruptions without following established process of notifying Central Dispatch prior to an outage.
• The Power Restoration Notification was received after five minutes resulting in an outage. A circuit breaker opened for 30 seconds and then closed resulting in an erroneous truck roll.

Sixty days after the initial installation, AMI was reinstalled in the OMS process flow. The installation consisted of creating additional CEP/ OPI filters, implementing OMS enhancements, reinforcing process with Central Dispatch and Field Operations. This implementation was restarted in phases, from station to station.

After working to re-tie the AMI to OMS, DTE Energy has been able to prevent false outage and erroneous truck runs, perform on demand reads in OMS, utilize AMI data for system outage data and analysis (SODA) reviews, utilize supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data to validate sustained outage, and provide a daily status report.

“Start small,” recommended Sitkauskas. Prior to implementation, it’s important to test the installation.

Outage Management with AMR at PECO

PECO completed integration of its AMR and OMS systems in 2006, and eight years later, the Exelon Corp subsidiary that served the southeastern region of Pennsylvania revisited the journey to integrate and reviewed the benefits.

Kevin Cornish, Enspiria Solutions and Glenn Pritchard, PECO discussed the opportunities that have resulted from advanced OMS:

• Improved customer satisfaction
• Power status verification
• Reliability analysis
• Future outage prediction

Today, this system provides significant benefits daily, and specifically during storm restorations.

Pritchard explained that “pinging” is a valuable tool in outage verification. Pinging refers to querying the AMR network to determine if a meter has recently communicated. (PECO received roughly 125,000 pings annually). Whether you’re checking to see if a customer is truly out, the validity of a job packaged prior to dispatch or that a job is complete, pinging will save your company a lot of headaches, according to Pritchard.

If an automatic assessment outage lasts longer than 20 minutes, it is automatically pinged. If the ping responds with “Power On,” the outage is cancelled. In the instance that it indicates “Power Off,” a transformer analysis is performed to potentially escalate the event into a larger outage. PECO’s results show that since 2004, 64,205 pings were cancelled, 19,550 were not.

The outage is identified, dispatched and resolved before any customers notify PECO of the event.

As an example, Pritchard described a “Summer Slam” event in July, 2006. Thunderstorms caused nearly 400,000 power outages. Twelve hundred customer outage calls were cancelled without crew dispatch due to the meter pings. Seven hundred fifty customer calls were escalated into primary events via pings to neighboring customers’ meters. Conservative estimates indicate AMR helped save in excess of $200,000 in avoided labor costs during this storm alone.

With the success of the simple meter pinging application, several enhanced tools were developed:

• Transformer analysis
• Fuse analysis
• Circuit analysis
• Batch pinging

PECO’s AMR and OMS implementation project was a transition from concept to success, and now AMI. The project has created daily benefits well beyond the original estimates. The success of this project has advanced the metering industry as a whole by proving that meter-based outage management benefits are real.

If your utility has an OMS story to tell, please share your experiences (challenges and successes) with your peers. There are several ways you can do this:

• Submit an abstract for Autovation 2012, Sept. 30-Oct. 3 in Long Beach, Calif. The Call for Speakers will open soon.
• Provide a byline article for News Link or agree to be interviewed by News Link staff for an article. Or, submit a blog post. Contact Janice Greenberg.
• Consider hosting a regional learning lab or participating in a webcast. Contact Debby Scheck.
• Start a discussion on the Utilimetrics LinkedIn Group

We look forward to hearing from you!