How does outage management system work

A list of outage reports? What summary information is on the screen? Summary information is equally important to network diagrams; this is where utilities look for devices confirmed and suspected to be out of service, how many line sections are involved, number of customers are affected by each outage, status of priority or medical accounts, crew locations, length of each outage and more. Better information, better prioritization. And, comprehensive, clear, summary information reduces the personnel count required to manage an outage and the time to brief new dispatchers on shift changes.

Other duties can be offloaded. An automated system can place calls to notify managers, assemble crews or call in emergency customer service people. Or, the process of clearing tickets can be made quicker and more accurate. For instance, clearing an outage at a device level will clear all outage tickets below that device, record the time, update the customer record, annotate the device history and write information to the report file. Then the system will relieve dispatch and customer service of the time consuming duty of calling customers who requested a callback after service restoration.

How can automation work for them? Pretty well in many cases. Without a connectivity model, two methods are most commonly used. First, global positioning system GPS data on each customer is put into customer billing system records.

Then, using a moderately priced digitized map, customer locations can be pinpointed. When a customer calls, the outage management system confirms the caller ID or asks the caller to enter identifying information. Next, the outage management computer queries the customer record in the billing system for the GPS location and dots the location on the map.

The more dots, the more likely the source. Reporting and data management substantially cut down on the time employees must spend on menial tasks. The accuracy of the computer and its ability to store, sort and report data make management and PUC reporting quick and easy. Device history files are easily built. All these should be strong secondary considerations when choosing an automated outage management system. The beauty of automated outage management is that a utility can start at a very basic level and increase capabilities as new systems are added or as better information becomes available.

From a simple automated call processing system that answers customer calls and pages a dispatcher to high power systems that use connectivity maps to pinpoint outages and dispatch crews, the goals are universal — to improve customer service and to get revenues flowing again as quickly as possible. Internet Speed Test. Remote Control. Business Technologist. Experience Information Technology conferences Join your peers for the unveiling of the latest insights at Gartner conferences.

View Conferences. Gartner Webinars Expert insights and strategies to address your priorities and solve your most pressing challenges. Watch video. Read more Read more. OMS uses the most current network state and an advanced prediction engine to help you predict and respond to outages in a more informed and efficient manner.

Now, dispatchers have real-time network information for accurately evaluating how an outage impacts customers, how to prioritize responses, effectively assign crews and better determine possibilities for backfeeding power. Our OMS helps you shorten restoration times, enhance public and worker safety, and improve communication with customers, the public and regulatory agencies. Explore strategies to tackle challenges head-on and succeed. Automatically track outages, predict their most likely source and share information across your utility.

Reduce the duration of individual outages and lower duration averages by identifying outage locations automatically. Provide regulatory agencies, the public and customers with timely and accurate estimates on restoration times. Reduce the costs associated with outages and crew management with easy-to-generate historical statistics and reliability indices that measure network efficiency.

Optimize your grid with our industry-leading system. ADMS presents specialized software tools that will help them adapt to varying conditions in real time. Decision making is faster for supervisors because of the reports provided by the application, even in cases of complex outages.

Share this Term. Enterprise Content Management Power Management. Tech moves fast! Stay ahead of the curve with Techopedia! Join nearly , subscribers who receive actionable tech insights from Techopedia. Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter!