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"All of the vehicles have access to the GIS system through a web-based interface, so they can quickly see where the problems are. It's completely seamless."
- Kyle Baggett, VP Operations and Engineering
The Organization
Cullman Electric Cooperative (CEC) is a member-owned utility in northern Alabama that provides service to about 41,000 member accounts in Cullman, Morgan, Lawrence and Winston counties over approximately 3,500 miles of power line. The utility purchases power from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
CEC field crews operate with a fleet of approximately 50 trucks.
The Challenge: Delivering and Restoring Power - Quickly and Safely
Windstorms, tornados and hurricanes have always been a hard fact of life in northern Alabama, but the past few years have been especially devastating. In September of 2004, Hurricane Ivan barreled through with high winds and record rainfall that left 1.3 million Alabamans without power, including about 75 percent of all CEC members. One year later, Hurricane Katrina caused almost as many outages.
A large, dense vegetation canopy (mostly pine trees) and hilly terrain add to the challenge of providing reliable and responsive service. Toppled trees, downed power lines and remote service areas can make outage management operations very difficult and dangerous.
"In this area, it's extremely important to be aware of approaching weather events," explains Kyle Baggett, VP of Engineering and Operations at CEC. "We know the destruction a tornado or thunderstorm can leave in its path, and we've certainly experienced our share of damage over the years. Although we strive to provide uninterrupted service, outages do occur from time to time."
A few years ago, the CEC outage response involved member service representatives taking calls and recording the information on paper, sometimes resulting in a stack of hundreds of reports. Yellow "stickies" were then placed on a map board in the CEC offices to indicate trouble spots. Fields crews struggled with cumbersome map books that were often outdated as soon as they were printed. Clearly, CEC needed to streamline its operations.
The Solution: A Fully Integrated Enterprise GIS System, Including Air-Trak® AVL
Cullman Electric Cooperative leaders wanted to automate their utility operations in practical and cost-effective ways that would be compatible with their existing and planned systems. They started by implementing a Geographic Information System (GIS) that's now integrated with other business systems across the entire organization, from member service to billing and beyond.
Some of the greatest improvements were made in the field engineering and outage management functions. An automatic vehicle location (AVL) system from Air-Trak, Inc. has been deployed on every truck in the CEC fleet, enabling the company to see exactly where all of its crews are working at any given time. In-cab hardware units provide streaming GPS data that feeds into the company's GIS system, and vice-versa. The system's dual-mode capability (with both cellular and satcom coverage) ensures constant tracking even in remote areas.
"Now we can watch the trucks move across our system live," says Baggett. "The system provides a visual display of all outages, and pinpoints the location of our vehicles in near real time on a four-panel electronic wall map that shows everything at a glance. The GPS data comes in through the Internet and flows directly into our GIS system, which feeds into dispatch, member service and other departments. It really has improved our crew management, particularly in terms of outage management and safety."
The flow of information has also been automated in the opposite direction. "When the agents take an outage call, that information is delivered through our Intranet to the GIS server. All of the vehicles have access to the GIS system through a web-based interface, so they can quickly see where the problems are. It's completely seamless."
The Implementation: Fast, Smooth and Seamless
CEC began its automation initiative with a GIS application from Utility Automation Integrators (UAI) that included outage management, field engineering and facilities management functions. The UAI UtilityCenter application is based on technology from ESRI, the world leader in GIS solutions, thus ensuring broad compatibility with many other associated tools.
Building on the GIS, CEC tied in other systems, including IVR (interactive voice response), AMR (automated meter reading), SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) and AVL (automatic vehicle location). The company also deployed laptop computers on all of its trucks. Today, every CEC employee uses the GIS in some aspect of their work. As Baggett puts it, "That's integration!"
The complete process (including all cross-functional integration) took less than 18 months, and employees embraced the new tools quickly.
"We did have some concerns about computer literacy - especially with the laptops - but once people realized how much easier it made their jobs, we couldn't install them fast enough. Everyone wanted access to the new system, and today we have full buy-in."
In fact, the system has become so vital that CEC now requires all of its contractors to deploy an Air-Trak AVL unit on at least one of their vehicles to ensure close coordination in the field.
The Results: Improved Outage Management, Safety and Efficiency
Kyle Baggett measures success in cold, hard numbers, including cost justifications for every new technology tool, faster responses to power outages, improved safety and greater operational efficiency.
"Considering the value of these $150,000 trucks and their crews, the cost of the system is really minimal. We've also saved a lot in terms of fuel expenses and 'driving around' time," says Baggett. "It's definitely been a good investment."
Outage management
Critical outage management operations have also become more efficient. In the past, CEC member service representatives knew little or nothing about what was happening in the field. Now they can see which areas are affected by an outage and how many crews are working at the site. They can take reports from members quickly, with information being forwarded via Intranet directly to the dispatch office, where it appears onscreen immediately. Field crews can also access this information through the Air-Trak system.
The system also produces a monthly outage report that helps the company correlate trends and locations to determine the cause of outages (e.g. right-of-way construction and animal-related events). This also helps them identify weaknesses and take corrective or preventive measures.
Safety
"When you have 100 or more linemen working for two days straight, you have to stay on top of everything. If a crew is out of the truck cutting trees, we need to know that. And when we say, 'We're going to close this switch,' we need to know with absolute certainty if there's anyone else in the area. It can really be a matter of life and death. Now we can see onscreen exactly where they are, including the nearest switch."
It's also important for field crews to keep track of each other. "During Hurricane Katrina and Ivan and other big storms, we've had people coming in from other utilities to help us, so we need to monitor and coordinate their activities as well," explains Baggett.
Operational efficiency
Virtually every aspect of CEC operations has become more efficient as a result of the new enterprise GIS and mobile resource management tools. System planning, supervision, outage management, billing, member service and other functions have all been automated to some degree.
One of the biggest changes has been the automation of maps. "We have no mapping department anymore," says Baggett. "Our stakers go out in the field, and when they stake a line, they enter it into the computer themselves." Through the ESRI-based GIS system, CEC has converted data from more than 300 AutoCAD maps that are now updated daily and uploaded to the trucks every morning through a wireless link.
As a member-owned cooperative, CEC places a high priority on accurate accounting and full accountability. The system produces tallies of hours worked and correlates this with location data to help verify that the cooperative is providing relatively equal service to all of its members. The comparison of work hours and location data also helps to highlight discrepancies such as unusually large overtime charges.
"It's a whole new way of looking at it," says Bagget. "It's about getting everybody to work together."
