Electric Energy T&D - Index

Electric Energy T&D - EE Magazine March / April - Index

• Analysis tools available with graphic work
design (GWD) products require location
accuracy in order to provide useful results,
such as accurate pole locations for guy
placement analysis.
• Along with circuit connectivity, engineering
analysis programs require valid stock
code attribution, for example, device and
conductor characteristics.
• Mobile applications such as service calls
and trouble restoration utilizing spatial
data are more successfully implemented
when there are unique location identifiers,
unique device identifiers, and accurate
positional data.
• Transmission and distribution siting requires
additional land data layers in order to
do multiple realistic path sitings for the
approval process.
Refresh activities to acquire this data include
capturing additional facilities through field
collection (for example, facilities that were
not originally included in the inventory
because they were not needed for maps,
but that are now important for applications),
updating of currently populated but dated
attribute values, populating attribution
from floating annotation and improving
the positional and topological accuracy
of facilities.
A data refresh initiative is not a simple effort.
However, the results of this undertaking
can enable successful implementation
of advanced GIS applications, facilitate
benefits realization of such applications
and provide additional ROI from the
GIS. Complexities and considerations
of undertaking a data refresh initiative
are not unlike initial data conversion
or migration. (See sidebar)
The good news is these complexities can
be resolved with a thoughtful, organized
approach. A data refresh effort requires
thorough planning and a project approach
to allow the enterprise to reap the benefits
of improved spatial data and to recover data
refresh costs. (See sidebar)
Advanced Applications of
Spatial Data
GIS implementation experts delineate
different phases of implementation. These
phases define increasingly sophisticated
spatial data usage, and the expansion of
advanced applications and integrations.
Each phase allows the utility to realize
increasing benefits and efficiencies in the
energy delivery process (refer to Figure 1 and
Table 1). A phase 1 GIS implementation is
comprised of the standalone GIS along with
other similarly standalone enterprise systems,
such as work management systems (WMS),
inspection and maintenance systems (I&M)
and computerized maintenance management
systems (CMMS).
Depending on the scope of a standalone GIS
implementation as well the original data
conversion scope and current data quality,
GIS data may not support phase and higher
phase implementations. If current data cannot
support the higher phase implementations,
a data refresh initiative is required before the
GIS can be leveraged to obtain additional ROI
through advanced applications and integration
with other systems.
Phase implementations involve the integration
of standalone systems. From the
perspective of spatial data, GIS is integrated
with other enterprise systems such as
WMS and CMMS, as well as graphic work
design (GWD), outage management (OMS),
customer information (CIS) and distribution
planning (DPS).
A phase 3 implementation brings together data
marts owned by the various energy delivery
systems for asset optimization. Distributed
data is integrated in order to optimize capital
expenditures and maintenance expenses.
GIS continues to be an enabling technology
in phase 3 implementations, such as OMS,
interruption reliability reporting, enterprise
asset management, and network planning.
In the case of OMS, outage causes can be
visualized geographically and analyzed using
equipment maintenance and characteristics,
and failure history. Interruption reliability
reporting utilizes data from the GIS, OMS and
CMMS. For enterprise asset management,
March-April 2008 Issue I
DaTa REfRESH complExITIES aND
coNSIDERaTIoNS
• For what applications and integrations
is the data refresh targeted?
• What positional accuracy is required
for targeted applications, and beyond?
How will existing coordinate data and
new GPS position data be reconciled
or coexist?
• How will the data refresh be funded?
• Should a widespread inventory be
conducted? Should the data be
collected along side normal field work?
Can the data be collected in small
areas as part of summer internships?
Or all of the above?
• How will the data be maintained going
forward?
• Can in-house labor perform the data
refresh activities? Is contract labor
needed? Or both?
• What data can be collected? For
example, some conductor characteristics
may not be discernible.
• Will existing GIS data be extracted
or will the inventory return ‘from
scratch’ data? If extracted, what is the
mechanism to extract the GIS data?
• What is the mechanism for
incorporating data returned back into
the production GIS data mart?
• What data reconciliation efforts will
need to be performed, i.e. meshing
the new data with existing data? What
software and effort will be needed?
• Will normal day-to-day posting of asbuilt
data be frozen or will data coming
back from a field have to be ‘reconciled’
with data posted since the original data
was extracted from the GIS?
CMMS obtains assets and spatial references
(such as GPS coordinates, routing or survey
grids) from the GIS. Finally, for network
planning, data from GIS and CIS, together
with historical performance of assets, can be
used to optimize load and reliability.
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