Smart Grid Outage Management: Intergraph and Siemens Kick It Up a Notch

I have seen many outage management concept demos over the years. All of them imply a world where systems are tied together in real time. In that scenario, the moment an outage occurs it lights up on a giant GIS map, which also shows the nearby work crews, the affected customers, and the affected equipment in the field.

I've seen precious few systems that work that smoothly in the real world, and all of those were custom setups cobbled together over many years by a utility. Now Intergraph and Siemens have taken a step towards seamless outage management in an “off-the-shelf” application.

At the core is the integration of Intergraph's outage management system (OMS) with Siemens’ distribution management system (DMS), a proposition that has been three years in the works. Intergraph can also pull in locational information from GPS units mounted on trucks, and asset data from GIS systems. As part of a recent announcement with meter data management firm eMeter, it will be able to pull in meter data too. By feeding this data in near real time to the OMS, the firms have a solution that approaches the functionality of those concept demos. And they can do it at scale, for networks with millions of endpoints.

The integration, which Intergraph labels as the Smart Grid Operations Command-and- Control Center, gives operators a common console for a variety of applications, ranging from outage management to load flow and fault location, to SCADA to mobile dispatch. They fuse all the data, then serve it up to the decision makers. No more jumping back and forth between different apps that can’t share data.

Impressive. But let me be clear. When I say I am impressed, I am talking about the integration into a common view, not the look and feel. When it comes to the user interface, both companies are old-school, engineering-driven firms who think modern, iPhone-style interfaces are for sissies. But even though it may not be as easy to drive as it should be, the combination is a step forward in power and convenience.

Which other companies are making strides towards the holy grail of integrated, real-time outage management? Use the Talk Back comment form to share your opinion with the rest of us.

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