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Electric Energy T&D - Index

Electric Energy T&D - EE Magazine March / April 2009 - Index

Circle 8 on Reader Service Card
The project team was comprised of Oracle
Utilities resources including a project manager
and technical resources with expertise in the
network management system program code,
building the geometric network model and
Oracle’s Business Intelligence product. There
were also three to four specific resources from
Oracle that worked on an as-needed basis on
the project.
MCEC provided project management, database
management system (DBMS) expertise,
integration assistance, testing resources and
a comprehensive level of direction gained
over the four-plus years of experience with
the original network management system
product.
MCEC’s primary goal was to enhance its
customer service – specifically with regard to
outage management – which would eventually
result in fewer service calls and help the utility
to save money. To meet this objective, MCEC
decided to marry three of its most important
systems – its interactive voice response (IVR)
system, advanced metering infrastructure
(AMI) and outage management system. This
integration allows the utility’s IVR system
(Milsoft PORCHE) to take the initial customer
call and match the provided phone number
with the customer on file. The IVR also helps
scope the outage and determine the resources
needed for restoration.
Next, the outage management system and
integrated Aclara AMI system receive the
customer information. The upgrade and
integration have allowed MCEC to “ping” its
meters to help utility managers identify outage
boundaries and specific device failures, as
well as predict fault locations. This capability
helps dispatchers and repair crews manage
and resolve issues quickly and efficiently. It
also enables MCEC to identify “priority groups”
experiencing outages and respond quickly to
meet its members’ needs.
The system flags critical customers with specific
statuses indicating their needs, allowing for
proper prioritization per established MCEC
policies. The integration of these three systems
allowed MCEC to streamline information
sharing, enhance data integrity and accelerate
issue resolution for its customers.
36 I March-April 2009 Issue
Major Success – Restoring Power
to Thousands
Most recently, a 65-mile-an-hour wind storm
sustained over a four-hour period hit Lexington,
SC and caused more than 1 ,000 MCEC
customers to lose service in about 300 different
events. MCEC workers scrambled to get
everyone back up and running, and were able to
restore most sites within 36 hours. The utility
estimates that without its upgraded outage
management system it would have taken twice
as long to get its customers’ services restored.
With the outage management system, MCEC
dispatchers can now more effectively manage
schedules because they have the insight they
need to prioritize emergency restorations and
schedule repair work. In addition, by collecting
and analyzing system data, MCEC can
proactively prevent problems from developing.
For example, the utility can tell if a specific
meter has experienced multiple outages,
allowing MCEC to locate faulty equipment and
service it more quickly.
MCEC is also able to perform test runs on
switching orders to assure that switching in
the field does not inadvertently de-energize
network elements. MCEC updates any meter
connectivity issues into its ArcFM GIS from
Telvent-Miner & Miner on a daily basis.
Furthermore, MCEC uses Oracle Utilities
Business Intelligence and other customer
information system (CIS) applications to
compile its monthly outage reports and
reliability figures. The business intelligence
solution allows MCEC to better report its
outage history to the Board of Directors or
Trustees by allowing the utility to look at the
number of outages, type and cause of outages,
their duration and how many customers were
affected by each outage.
additional features of the system include:
• Improved asset performance tracking,
which allows MCEC to accelerate asset
management decisions to optimize
expenditures on new and existing assets.
This also enables the utility to improve
service reliability by tracking all customers
affected by an outage, determining electrical
configurations of every device on every