Outage Management Analytics
As part of HEXstream’s Utility360 suite, the Outage Management Analytics Solution is a comprehensive set of tools designed to connect primary Transmission & Distribution (T&D) datasets and make tailored information available to broaden utility-response capabilities and minimize outage impacts. Our solution provides comprehensive analytics for ADMS featuring real-time dashboards and outage maps that put critical data at decision-makers’ fingertips. It is tailored to utility-specific needs and creates an integrated view across all critical operational systems. It provides real-time data to generate accurate ETRs and enables streamlined restoration.
Reliability Analytics and Reporting (SAIDI/SAIFI)
HEXstream offers a dashboard to display all possible reliability analytics and reporting metrics. As a standard metric, we provide instant gratification and a big-picture view on how well your assets are performing. Our reliability analytics can be customized to meet clients’ reliability-reporting requirements.
SAIDI, CAIFI, & SAIFI: A Guide to Utility Reliability Metrics
In this report, we break down the meaning of some important metrics (commonly referred to via acronym) used by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, along with utilities themselves, when measuring utility service reliability.
Outage Dashboards: Important Utility ETR Reports
Utility customers have higher expectations than ever. They depend on reliable utility service, and when they experience an outage, they expect timely, accurate information on service restoration.
Reliability Reporting for Utilities: Flexibility Matters
Reliability Reporting metrics are used by utilities and regulatory bodies to track customer service quality, monitor continuous improvement initiatives, and highlight chronic issues. The precise formulation of these metrics can vary substantially in practice. For example, many utilities report reliability statistics at the event level. Others roll their reporting up at the switching level instead.
Integrating 4 Outage Management Systems Into a Single Analytics Platform
Generating Reliability Reports 8x Faster After the Acquisition
The Role Of ADMS In T&D Grid Efficiency And Utility Operations
Creating Smarter Asset-Management Strategies For T&D Utilities
First Splash: An Intro To Non-Revenue Water Opportunities
SPARC: A Smarter Way To Handle Outage Alerts And Restoration Updates
Before The Lightning Bolt: Evolving Strategies For Smarter Outage Response
Storm-Management Analytics
Our custom Storm-Management portal provides dedicated storm reporting based on duration and location. We can track and report storms to the lowest possible geographic cluster (region, AWC, etc.) while including innovative reliability metrics from historical storm data using our best-in-class reporting. This approach provides multi-level coverage from district/area all the way to feeders and meters, with bespoke solutions that adapt to utilities’ unique needs and standards. We provide a 360-degree view of utilities’ operations during major events and blue-sky scenarios.
Utility Outage Management: Vegetation Matters
How Extreme Weather Will Accelerate the Digital Transformation of Utilities
“For utility companies, transforming operations and systems with digital technologies can create substantial value: a reduction in operating expenses of up to 25 percent, which can translate into lower revenue requirements or higher profits. Performance gains of 20 to 40 percent in such areas as safety, reliability, customer satisfaction, and regulatory compliance are also achievable. “—McKinsey Report, “Accelerating digital transformations: A playbook for utilities.”
Digitalizing Outage Management Ops for a Publicly-Traded Power Utility
The Threats With Climate Change Vs. Grid Resiliency With Digital Applications
The Emerging Benefits Of Proper Integration In Evolving Utilities
Great Governance And Advanced Analytics For Successful Vegetation Management
Creating Smarter Asset-Management Strategies For T&D Utilities
SPARC: A Smarter Way To Handle Outage Alerts And Restoration Updates
Before The Lightning Bolt: Evolving Strategies For Smarter Outage Response
Fire & Power: An Emergency Response Q&A From Two HEXstream SMEs With Unique Backgrounds
Major/Storm Events Analytics
It is critical to effectively handle large amounts of diverse data sets generated by multiple stand-alone source systems operating in complex, dynamic (changing) environments. This minimizes outage duration and safely and economically reduces the number of customers affected by storms, while addressing regulatory and consumer concerns.
The utilities industry is suffering a lack of skilled, experienced professionals to manage these complex strategies. Analytics programs preserve storm-response knowledge, which improves resiliency even during staff churn and retirements.
due to staff churn and early retirements. These programs generate single points of knowledge in near real time with synchronized 360-degree situational awareness of all the key variables affecting outage response and service restoration. Examples include weather, fault events, crews, damage assessments, repair status, customers, ETRs and more.
Storm-event analytics programs reduce errors, increase productivity, and improve collaboration between teams by eliminating the manual handling of data from different source systems during crises. They enable teams to assess current and historical events/faults (type of fault, # and types of customers affected, failed device, damage, crew status, ETR, etc.) across different geographic scales (state, zone, feeder, device, customer, etc.) to improve resource allocation and prioritization for restoration.
We can now identify, categorize, roll-up and track status of devices causing outages by event types, customers affected, network zones, circuits, etc. We can use this information to improve maintenance, capital investments (undergrounding), storm planning, customer notifications, and—ultimately—reliability and resiliency. We can provide timely information to CSR to respond to call-ins and outbound messages including outage complaints, timely and accurate ETR updates, and crew appointments.
The Threats With Climate Change Vs. Grid Resiliency With Digital Applications
Great Governance And Advanced Analytics For Successful Vegetation Management
The Role Of ADMS In T&D Grid Efficiency And Utility Operations
Creating Smarter Asset-Management Strategies For T&D Utilities
SPARC: A Smarter Way To Handle Outage Alerts And Restoration Updates
Before The Lightning Bolt: Evolving Strategies For Smarter Outage Response
Fire & Power: An Emergency Response Q&A From Two HEXstream SMEs With Unique Backgrounds
Outage Communications & The Customer Experience
It is critical (and challenging) to determine the most effective digital-communications channels before, during and after outages. Doing so enables digital channel, vendor-agnostic solutions.
We can synthesize (integrate) data from different source systems to assess, and then adapt to, the most effective communications channel by individual consumer or consumer segment; type of outage, e.g., different types of planned, normal event, major event; type of communication message (e.g., crew visit, planned outage, ETR1, ETRN, restoration); geographic area (e.g., avoid texts in areas of cellular coverage is poor all the time or during storms, which we can determine through third-party data sources); methods to improve customer relationships; reduction in staff time to respond to consumers.
Why Utility Analytics Drive A Quality Customer Experience
Customers depend on their utility service, and they have higher expectations than ever for timely, accurate information from their utility service providers.
The ESG Movement for Utilities
“ESG-oriented investing has experienced a meteoric rise. Global sustainable investment now tops $30 trillion—up 68 percent since 2014 and tenfold since 2004...the magnitude of investment flow suggests that ESG is much more than a fad or a feel-good exercise.” –McKinsey Quarterly Article on “Five Ways That ESG Creates Value”
A New Imperative for Utilities to Manage their Unbilled Revenue
“While regulators generally allow utilities to recover prudently incurred costs from ratepayers, utilities are always cognizant of the effect rising costs have on customers' bills. As these bills increase, customers find it incrementally more difficult to pay, which often hampers a utility's ability to effectively manage regulatory risk. This predicament is a drawback in many of the financial solutions used to reduce weather-related risks, and if not well managed, may lead to unintended consequences.” –S&P Global Report, “Can U.S. Utilities Weather the Storm”
A Regional Credit Union Deepens its Understanding of Member Behavior
A Fortune 500 Energy Company Transforms External Outage Communications
The Threats With Climate Change Vs. Grid Resiliency With Digital Applications
SPARC: A Smarter Way To Handle Outage Alerts And Restoration Updates
Before The Lightning Bolt: Evolving Strategies For Smarter Outage Response
Fire & Power: An Emergency Response Q&A From Two HEXstream SMEs With Unique Backgrounds
Automated Restoration Validation with AMI
There are great inefficiencies and high costs as a result of manual processes for validating service-restoration to customers. Automating these processes results in reduced CSR staff time spent handling calls and IVR responses to confirm service restoration. It can lower the time to detect and restore concurrent faults, improving ETRs and customer relationships, while providing timely and accurate restoration messaging to customers. Automating restoration validation improves reliability metrics reported to PUC (CAIDI, CAIFI) by eliminating delays due to manual processes for removing restored customers from the outage queue for manual processes, dispatching crews for repair or restoration switching for concurrent (or next) fault, and boosting safety for line crews through timely/early detection of restored (energized) circuits.
HEXstream has a dedicated dashboard for the customer experience in which we can include data from both active and historical customers. We can study customers’ outage performance for certain time periods, and our custom, dedicated Town-Liaison Report provides tailor-made reports to town liaisons.
Enhanced ETR Calculation
ETR is a critical metric for communicating with customers, both residential and commercial, during an outage. It affects key metrics, including SAIDI and SAIFI. Surveys of consumers have shown that accuracy of ETR is viewed as more important than actual speed of restoration. Given the choice of restoration time of between one hour to six hours, or restoration in two to two and a half hours, the preference is the shorter window of two to two a half hours. The reason for this is that with an accurate estimate, plans can be made to accommodate affected items, such as food that may spoil or work that needs to be done. A potentially quicker restoration, but with a lot of uncertainty means that plans can’t be made.
In spite of the customer-focused role of ETR, it does not address the actual customer-outage experience, i.e., from the time the outage occurs till full restoration (normal operation). Other challenges related to current ETR calculations include an ad-hoc approach by each utility to calculate ETR, and lack of any rigorous, standardized methods across the utility industry.
ETR is ultimately related to business processes and maintenance activities of assets. However, there are few applicable best practices from other industries in the utility sector. ETR is driven by underlying technologies. This close relationship of business processes and technologies can be exploited to significantly improve ETRs. Utilities value enhanced ETR calculation for its ability to improve ETOR accuracy in measurable ways. Utilities can approach ETOR from a fully customer-centric perspective, without compromising current practices in the short term, and establish standardized methodologies that will include business processes, asset maintenance, data management, dashboards, and other decision-support tools.
This enhanced scope of ETOR is integral to several other aspects of the distribution O&M value chain. Consequently, ETOR metric can be used to drive improvements in these other areas of distribution O&M.
HEXstream’s prescriptive analytics tell the story of how/when/where ETRs occur and enable post-event analysis on durations of those events. We offer five custom levels of ETR tracking and reporting, with ETR calculations that address the following deviations:
· ETR source
· ETR vs. actual comparison
Utility Outage Management: Before and After the Emergency
Emergency management is the fastest-moving operational challenge faced by most utilities. Storm management outcomes have dramatic implications for infrastructure health, customer satisfaction, service reliability, and safety. Field technicians, dispatchers, management personnel, and other utility professionals can meet this challenge best when they have access to timely, intuitive, and detail-rich intelligence regarding the current situation.