Touching base

During a power outage utility workers need to ensure they have things up and running as soon as possible, mobile technologies therefore play a very important role. At Pepco Holdings, one of the largest energy delivery companies in the Mid-Atlantic region, serving about 1.9 million customers, the analytics are in place to predict outage locations and dispatch crews to the likely source of power interruptions. “Our field crews arriving at the location then do a diagnosis of what problems they find and transmit this information back to one of our control centers where it can be further analyzed,” outlines Sullivan. “We can then focus our efforts to restore power more quickly to our customers.”

Each of the company’s field crews have mobile computers in their vehicles which in turn are connected to work management systems in its central office. Crews can be dispatched through the use of the mobile computer and can provide feedback on information such as the extent of the damage, the kind of materials that may be needed to make repairs and the estimated time for restoration – all of which can entered into their mobile computer. All this data goes back to their control center and is then communicated to customers so they know when power might return.

Deploying this kind of equipment always has its challenges as Sullivan explains: “We have craftsmen accustomed to doing mechanical work who are now being asked to take their rubber gloves off and enter data into a mobile computer system. We had to ensure that the mobile computers had touch screens and we limit the amount of data entry. Further, this might not be on the top of the list of their things to do – they just want to get the work done and the power restored. However, it’s essential to get the workforce to appreciate the value and the importance of feeding accurate data into these systems. This way we can get timely information to our customers as the power restoration progresses so they can plan accordingly. It puts a human interface to the technology.”

In addition, Sullivan identifies that a solid mobile communications system is critical to making this system work. “Our crews and their trucks are always on the move. The communications system needs to work flawlessly in all conditions – whether a truck is on the highway or moving very slowly through neighborhoods looking for problems.” The mobile communications also needs to work well during emergency situations as we serve critical areas of the U.S. including the nations’ capital. Right now, we use a combination of commercial communications systems but we are always on the lookout for new and improved technologies and products that we can use.

One of the more interesting aspects is cutting out interfaces and hand-offs that existed in the past but are no longer necessary. To illustrate this, Sullivan provides an example of a customer call into their call center “The customer always has the option to talk to a call center representative but many choose to use the Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) computer application that asks questions and recognizes the verbal answers. The information is then routed to a control center where it goes out to the field crew.

Overall, we are focused on pinpointing outage locations, getting the right amount of crews to the precise locations and ensuring that our customers are informed every step of the way.

AMI

For too long, utilities have had to send personnel to each electric meter to obtain readings. The result is that utilities and customers have been fraught with difficulties due to absent or poor data. With AMI solutions these challenges can be eradicated as they allow for two-way communication to get a meter read back to a central site. Pepco Holdings has already gained a lot of experience in remote data collection having completed a number of pilots in this area over the past three or four years. In fact, the company is right on the cusp of making a purchase for a system-wide rollout of smart meters across its 1.8 million customers.

“With a smart meter you get additional functionality beyond the advanced metering. In many respects these are sensors on a smart grid for outage detection. Further, they can act as a gateway into the home to control appliances, provide quality information as well as a remote metering device that can communicate through two-way communication.”

So far, the company has gone through vendor evaluations and is committed to deploying an advanced metering infrastructure, as Sullivan highlights, coupled with the added functions of smart meters. “We’ll have gateway capability as well as sensor capability,” he explains.

Such a rollout will help to improve the company’s ability to deliver safe, reliable, and efficient power to its customers, and hopes to help its customers manage their energy better in the future.

The amount of data generated by the meters might prove to be a challenge as Sullivan outlines: “It’s a tremendous amount of data,” he acknowledges. “In our case, 1.8 million meters will be delivering back metering information on a periodicity as short as 15-minute intervals. That’s an awful lot of data.”

Sullivan finishes by recalling how when markets were deregulated at the end of the 90s there was a lot of hope that this would result in lower prices. However, this simply did not materialize for residential customers and benefited simply commercial and industrial ones. “For the most part, the residential base has not been able to take advantage of the competitive supply market,” he highlights. “However, I believe the AMI will give them access to that competitive power market.”