By Satish Saini, HEXstream utilities industry specialist  

Recent Hurricanes Helene and Milton have highlighted how extreme weather events are affecting America’s power transmission and distribution infrastructure. (In a nutshell, they are exposing serious cracks.)   

The efficient management of fleet and field-crew services and resources are critical for quick power restoration, to minimize outages and to ensure safety for citizens. But efficient management isn’t always in place. Smart utilities are leveraging advanced technologies through coordinated and collaborated efforts, enabling them to effectively launch large-scale recovery operations based on improved decision-making insights. 

Let’s explore some of the key technologies being used to manage fleet and field-crew services efficiently: 

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide spatial visualization and mapping capabilities, helping identify and prioritize areas impacted by hurricanes with meaningful information on affected grid assets, customer pockets and track-crew locations in real time with updated estimated times of restoration (ETRs). 

Mobile workforce & fleet-management systems help streamline field operations by providing dispatchers and field crews with real-time updates, job assignments, and work-order management during emergencies. Equipped with GPS and telematics, these systems include capabilities like mobile workorders, automated job-scheduling, real-time communication, and route-optimization for fleets to access assignments, to report progress, and to update the status of restoration tasks. 

Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) including Outage Management (OMS) platforms integrate various utility operations with detailed information on grid assets and infrastructure, including real-time monitoring of the distribution network, fault location and isolation, and some automated switching operations. These systems help utilities direct field crews to the most critical areas, reducing outage duration by detecting which feeders, circuit sections and assets are out of service and suggesting the best course of action to restore power, which guides field crews accordingly. 

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) data through relevant analytics plays a key role in enhancing outage detection, response and restoration efforts for utilities. By leveraging real-time data from customer smart meters along with their exact locations, utilities can improve operational efficiency, efficiently managing field crews and resources to reduce downtime and enhance customer satisfaction. 

Drone and aerial-inspection technology equipped with high-resolution cameras and thermal sensors have the capability to inspect power lines and infrastructure for damage in hard-to-reach or hazardous areas, reducing the need for manual inspections. These tools quicken damage assessment. 

Data analytics & data-management systems through data-storage platforms enable utilities to store, access, share and analyze critical data related to network assets, outage history, past events and operational data and crew assignments. Cloud infrastructure ensures data availability and continuity even during power outages, which are key elements in disaster recovery. In particular, cloud-based storage systems equipped with efficient data-synchronization provide a centralized hub for data-sharing and collaboration, ensuring that all crews, whether on-site or remote, are working with consistent and up-to-date information. 

Some of the leading technology solutions and service providers for utilities include ADMS and OMS by various vendors like ABB, GE, Shneider and Survalent. Oracle Field Service Cloud offers end-to-end field-service management with real-time scheduling, routing, and mobile capabilities. IBM Maximo is a comprehensive asset and workforce-management solution that supports field operations and integrates with other enterprise systems.  

And HEXstream’s Utility360 combined with our AMI Analytics offering is an efficient solution to effectively manage field crews, outages ETRs and reliability indices reporting. 

Data management and analytics play a pivotal role with the massive volumes of data generated by multiple sources at modern utilities; this data is related to operations, outages, asset-management, field crews and workforce management, and customer-information systems. 

HEXstream, with our decades of expertise in all of these fields, can guide utilities to not just weather the current turbulent state of utilities, but absolutely thrive within it.  

WANT YOUR FIELD CREWS TO WORK SMARTER? CONNECT WITH US HERE TO LEARN HOW HEXSTREAM CAN HELP.