Ken Silverstein EnergyBiz Insider Editor-in-Chief

Beefing up response times makes good sense. Such systems can pay for themselves in a relatively short period while customer satisfaction will rise if their power is restored faster. Most utilities understand the need to increase productivity and decrease costs as well as have a workforce that can share knowledge and work more efficiently. By installing or upgrading their outage management systems, utilities could augment their competitiveness.

According to Energy Central's research and analysis division that conducted a survey of utility executives in November 2005, utilities plan to spend upwards of $3 billion on all information technology systems. That ranges from enterprise resource management systems to outage management systems. The things holding companies back include such factors as the complexity of integrating disparate systems to the need to focus on pressing issues like controlling the underlying cost of fuel.

Meantime, the costs are still accruing from Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. No doubt, the price of restoration can add up. And in the midst of the fracas, utilities can pay a lot more for services because they are in a rush to get back to normal. But such haste can prove expensive. That's why some utilities are turning to automated services to handle all essential services, including those tied to outage management and disaster response.

Such software can handle all requests for proposals where prospective vendors can submit their bids while any subsequent delivery of goods and services is properly managed. In essence, any accepted bids are controlled and if billing deviates from a previously agreed upon price, it is flagged for review.

Those software systems work for both planned and unplanned events. During a hurricane, for example, suppliers will go on line and fill out a form and explain what they have done. Contractors are paid in a timely and accurate manner.

Entergy Corp. had such a system in place a full year before Hurricane Katrina struck. "Entergy had been getting boxes of invoices that they had to manually reconcile," says Melisa Liberman, a vice president for IQNavigator, which works with the utility on these issues. "Because it had been trying to process those invoices so quickly, it paid above the normal rates -- even for movies that contractors watched in their hotels."

When the lights go out in Colorado Springs Utility's territory, it says that it will be there to fix the problem in 30 minutes. And because the municipal utility is trying to increase its name recognition and demonstrate the value of having a power company that is locally-owned, the enhanced service will be a great asset, it says

All told, the company says that response times are about 40 percent faster, enabling the company to meet its 30-minute time frame objective. It's about making sure that customer service agents get the right information and are able to tell callers precisely where the outage has occurred and when it will be remedied.

Fancy Equipment

Fancy equipment like satellite systems can pinpoint exactly where problems are and show field personnel not only directions but also what inventories are necessary to have with them. The old system of having agents take information and sort it by hand before it is relayed to crews is inefficient -- and costly, since it involves a lot of overtime.

Toward that end, utilities might expect a pay back on such sophisticated systems within three to seven years, all on an initial investment of between $500,000 and $5 million, say experts who follow these things. The size of the investment depends on how big the utility is, how many modules must be used and what equipment is necessary to make the system run. The return, of course, depends on how many storms ravage an area and how much is saved by getting folks back on line quicker.

In the case of Colorado Springs Utility, it says that it will be better able to allocate its resources because of the outage management system. Instead of channeling money to fix a whole circuit, the satellite system can narrow where the problem is occurring -- thus the fix is quicker and cheaper.

Similarly, Allegheny Energy is enhancing its outage management and work management technologies by having such blackouts reported to a centralized office. That center not only keeps customers informed but also provides crews precise details about where such outages have occurred.

Its work management system functions in a similar fashion. Basically, customer information is now in the hands of crews, who have access to detailed maps and customer histories. The aim of the technology is to decentralize information so that customers can be served faster. If, for instance, a storm ravages parts of Allegheny's territory, it can cull field personnel from other areas and equip them with the tools necessary to make them effective at their jobs.

Key Tools

Public Service of New Mexico also wanted to become customer centric. In 1994, its customer ratings dropped by 10 percent. It responded by creating an outage management system that was implemented in 1998. The investment has paid off. Not only are customers happy but the technology paid for itself within three years, namely through a dramatic reduction in restoration times and overtime costs.

Instead of customer service agents merely recording where outages have occurred, they can now relay them to the outage center and provide customers with an estimate of when their power will be back on. Such technology, replete with automated mapping, arms crews with precise directions and customer histories.

One of the key tools to effectively manage resources is having the right hardware and software. Oftentimes disasters require the needs of hundreds of workers outside a given area, and they are unfamiliar with the surroundings and the infrastructure. They don't just need maps. They need an inventory of the assets in a given area, or how many transformers and poles as well as how much wiring. The goal is to increase response times and by extension, customer satisfaction.

"In the past, utilities used computer-generated maps in the engineering offices," says Marty Osborn, vice president of product strategy for software developer Datastream. "Now, all this information can be stored on a computer and people all over have access."

Utilities can't control the weather. But they can manage their responses. Today, many of those companies are finding success with the latest outage management and work flow systems.

For far more extensive news on the energy/power visit:  http://www.energycentral.com .

Copyright © 1996-2005 by CyberTech, Inc. All rights reserved.