Pre-Mobilization for Storm Response

To the extent that an electric utility properly pre-mobilizes for an upcoming storm, the response and restoration times will be significantly improved. There are, however, additional practices and processes that should be incorporated into an overall storm mobilization strategy. The prediction and assessment of damage, assignment of appropriate personnel (experience and quantity) and estimate of restoration time are also vitally important.

Storm Response Practices

The following summarizes some of the actions and measures that leading electric utilities institute to achieve “best in class” performance:

Field-based Assessments employ damage assessors, deployed to the affected areas, to enable the identification of damage (where possible), idealy the precise location of the fault. These assessments  add immeasurably to the efficiency of the feeder troubleshooting and repair crews, and provides dispatching with a better sense of restoration time.

Staffing Alternatives: In pre-arranging additional resources, an electric utility has a number of options, namely: Internal Company Resources offering repair services as well as support functions (e.g. wire watching, damage assessments, logistical support), On-site Contractors (these tend to be an easy option as this type of support is usually included in all contracts), and Mutual Assistance (calling on other utilities).

• Use of Internal Company resources seems extremely practical and simple to implement. However work rules, training requirements (particularly when utilizing support staff in a “second job” capacity), and unpredictable weather patterns relative to the various districts complicate matters.
• Use of On-Site Contractors can be most effective based primarily on their motivation to provide added service and where there is a stable complement of on-site contractors, a well-trained workforce.
• Mutual Assistance is certainly helpful in performing final restoration, but given the dynamics of neighboring utilities and lack of precision in predicting the location of storms, this option is typically part of a reactive approach to restoration (neighboring utilities will not release their crews until the full impact of the storm on their system is fully understood).

Staffing Related Processes/Policies

There are also a number of staffing-related processes/policies that electric utilities use to better align its staff with the realities of the unpredictability of storms; namely:

• First Responder Programs are typically corporate-wide programs where specific qualified employees equipped with pagers are put into a database that matches their work locations (and home location) with the nearest substations. When the dispatcher receives an alarm that indicates an outage (or warning) condition at one of these substations, the dispatcher can page all those who are matched to that substation with a request that they check with the dispatcher and, if needed, go immediately to the substation to observe the situation. This program effectively expands the substation troubleman staffing by providing “extra eyes and ears” (and, with the proper training, helping hands as well) in those critical situations in which a portion of the substation (e.g. an entire transformer bank feeding many circuits) is either de-energized or alarmed. It is worth noting that typical SCADA at a substation (where installed) has a limited number of alarms that, while informative, may not be conclusive in what is happening. Therefore, it is useful to have whoever is nearest to the substation get there as soon as possible – even if that individual is not qualified to do switching or some other aspect of restoration or prevention.
• Call Outs, the mobilization of off-duty workers, is a key factor in reducing the duration of system outages. Electric utilities that experience a call-out acceptance rate in excess of 70 percent, typically are top performers in service restoration.
• Alternate Shift: Electric utilities have been experimenting with the use of alternate work shifts of field personnel to better match the availability of crews with the need for repair work in minor storms. The standard utility shift matches the standard ‘day shift’ in most industries (for example, 7AM to 3PM or 7:30AM to 3:30PM). Statistically, non-winter seasons thunderstorms that develop from normal diurnal convective activity are more likely to occur in the mid- to late-afternoon or early evening. Therefore, in these types of storms tend to hit just as electric utility construction crews are winding down their shift. When storms are anticipated, the utilities normally “hold over” crews from the day shift (on an overtime basis), and use the call out program to augment the staff as necessary. A less costly and more certain measure is to arrange for some of the crews to work an alternate shift. Of course, the “evening shift” that some of the troublemen work is well suited to handle such storms, but if the damage involves significant line work, then full overhead line crews will be needed to make the repairs. It is possible to have construction crews on an evening shift, but it is not ideal because the need for them does not typically extend to the end of such a shift (e.g., 11PM), and more importantly such a shift, on a regular, daily basis, tends to conflict with worker productivity, visibility, safety, and customer satisfaction (due to noise and intrusive activity in the evening hours). The alternative that most electric utilities have implemented begins at 11AM or noon and extends to 7PM or 8PM.  Particularly if this is used in the daylight savings period, the concerns about working at night are allayed and the shift does not seem as unnatural, and may even be preferable to some workers. The typical practice is to have only a handful of crews switch to this shift, because the standard construction shift remains ideal for most. However, the shift of even a few crews can noticeably improve the ability to respond to late-afternoon storms.

Storm Response Support Tools

• Integrated Voice Response (IVR) aids in assuring outage restoration, locating “nested outages” within larger ones, and proves vital in supporting the overall customer communication strategy. When a customer calls to report an outage, he/she is provided the option of requiring a call back via this system. Typically, 50 percent of all customers reporting an outage request a call back (of which 5 percent are still experiencing an outage though the utility thought otherwise). Further, in single-call cases, the crew actually clearing the trouble call can confirm that service has been restored; but multiple calls (grouped into a single case) are best handled with this application of IVR.
• Resource and Storm Outage Tracking supports the assignment, mobilization and demobilization, and work processes of every assigned individual during storm related outage. It provides current status and the ability to more effectively define and apply lessons-learned during future storm events.

Taken in their entirety (and applied to the specific requirements and uniqueness of each electric utility’s situation), these concepts, processes and practices can have a dramatic effect on reducing the customer minutes of interruptions (as measured by CAIDI), and on providing reliable service independent of time of day and/or day of week.