Lessons Learned from Oncor and Portland General Electric

For many years attention has focused on pre-deployment and deployment of advanced metering systems (AMS).  As utilities enter the final stages of deployment they face new challenges as well as tremendous opportunities for integrating technology within the utility and improving operations. 

Autovation 2011 covered the entire utility technology lifecycle. This article highlights the Beyond the Meter education session Tuesday, Sept. 27.

Oncor, the sixth largest utility in the U.S. began deploying fully functional AMS in late 2009. About two million of Oncor’s 3.2 million meters have been deployed with full deployment scheduled for 2012. This fully integrated system provides:

• 15-minute VEE (validate, edit, estimate) data to customers, REPs and ERCOT (for settlement).
• 2-way transactions (disconnects/ reconnects, on-demand reads, etc.).
• Secured connections and services to home area network (HAN) devices via ZigBee SEP 1.0 radio frequency interface.
• A common Web portal for REP, customers and customer authorized 3^rd parties (GUI and APIs)

So how does it all work?

“You need a robust testing environment,” said Mark Carpenter, CIO of Oncor, Texas’ largest regulated transmission and distribution utility that serves 7.5 million people statewide. Carpenter is also a newly-elected Utilimetrics board member.

“In theory,” he said, “it’s nice to specify exactly what you want before you actually start building it.” Carpenter explained that when inventing the system in a dynamic environment, clarification and modification contribute to a continuous and repetitive process.

“Remember, [AMS] is not just a meter reading system,” said Carpenter. “This is a SCADA system.”  And as Carpenter specified, “It’s extremely important to know and understand your market.” According to Carpenter, the Public Utility Commission of Texas-led Advanced Metering Implementation Team process has worked well in Texas.

When designing the system, Oncor adhered to solid design principles, factoring in security from the very beginning. In an effort to make the systems most efficient, Oncor:

• Included performance monitoring;
• Designed the system for ease of upgrade/ modification;
• Planned for evolving CIM interface changes;
• Considered multiple software/ FW changes in advance; and
• Provided robust system synchronization

In the testing/ building phase, Carpenter said that the two most important things to consider are:

• Establishing robust development and test environments will help to maintain strict version control; and
• Maintaining strict version control

“Managing data is a big deal,” said Carpenter. He explains that utilities must be continuously monitoring these large integrated systems, which require “constant care and feeding.” Oncor generates about one terabyte per month, within the two million meters. “Don’t wait to establish data retention policies.”

And continual performance improvement is imperative: “It’s important to always remember to continually validate the end-to-end production system,” said Carpenter, “especially after modifications.”

As a utility, your main focus on customers and stakeholders is key: “There are stakeholders in this business,” says Carpenter. “This isn’t just about technology—it’s about everybody.”

Revenue Protection with Smart Meters

Eric Spack and Steve Sprague are leading a unique mission at Portland General Electric (PGE). The PGE team is taking revenue protection to the next level and beyond, utilizing new technology to work more efficiently.

A proactive approach to revenue protection utilizes alarms and generates leads based on interval data and primary metering. A major part of the team’s workload consists of confronting marijuana growers whose operations result in huge losses for the utility.

“We had 45 meters, from which we were missing about 1,400 kilowatt-hours,” said Sprague, “and at the end of the month, we had 20,000 kilowatts missing.” Utilities are facing huge losses from thefts like these, and at PGE, in a state where growing medical marijuana is legal, these operations are oftentimes extended beyond legal limits, and utilities are paying the price.

Over the last three years, AMI has dramatically improved energy recovery for PGE, from 32 Mwh in 2007 to 44 Mwh today and 75 percent of leads for the Lost Revenue Protection are generated by readers:

• Tampers & Diversion;
• Stopped/ Damaged meters;
• Multiplier errors;
• Lost meters;
• Drug houses; and
• Safety issues

These smart meters maintain current capability, allowing for real-time usability. What specifically can the meters do?

• Tamper alarm: If the meter is pulled or removed, an alarm is generated with a date and timestamp.
• Alarms scored: Leads are automatically prioritized.
• Lead generator: All the leads are sent through a portal to Energy Recovery where they are reviewed and assigned to ERU Investigators or meter men.
• Leads filtered: Without filters, alarms are useless and “we are filtering out 68 percent of the alarms and leads coming in.”
• Filtering against: WMIS, Service Link, Outage, which avoids wasted time on wasted trips.
• Added benefit: Not only generates leads but allows PGE to use the information on existing cases and leads from other sources.
• KWH analytics: Low use, high use and zero use, it reads abnormal usage patterns

Once the norm is established, Point of Passage metering installations are screened to prevent from losses. Meter failures and alarms, however, do not cause the largest losses. The problem therein lies with theft and particularly, grow houses.

When marijuana grow operations overload transformers and connectors, it’s at the expense of PGE.  “Houses are not meant to be greenhouses,” said Sprague. The usage thefts are typically in the range of $1,500 to $2,500 per month, according to Sprague and Spack. Ninety percent of power thefts supporting grow operations are done by splicing in ahead of the meter.

“[At PGE] we have a 100 percent success rate in criminal grow diversion cases,” said Sprague. In 80 percent of those cases, money was recovered.

By learning how grow operations work, PGE adjusted to them and hunted them down, and by the time they were done, according to Sprague, they worked about 60 grow sites and billed roughly $620,000.

If your utility is near completion or has already completed deployment, 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!