Distribution Control Systems, Inc. (DCSI) has released its advanced Outage Assessment System (OASys) Version 3.0, which leverages the TWACS system connectivity data to provide electric utilities with valuable outage and distribution system reliability information.
Outage assessment tasks, schedules and sampling groups are user-defined, as well as the selection of substations, bus sections or feeder options that are to be checked. Up to 64 meters may be checked in a single TWACS transaction, and up to 256 meters per ping group may be checked when AMIgo system components are in use. On discovery of an outage, the Traverse Network function is immediately enabled, and the network is examined upstream and downstream to determine the extent of the outage. Notification of an outage is configurable and can be relayed to the designated personnel via e-mail and/or pager. System speed is enhanced when using the fast ping option to identify non-powered metering devices by not having to bring back excess “overhead” data.
As an outage assessment job is in progress, resulting information is displayed in hierarchical format as a list and can optionally be displayed on a geospatial map with the addition of third-party software. The utility is provided with the data needed to send an appropriate utility crew to fix outage problems, and OASys monitors the restoration progress in real time. OASys version 3.0 also offers the ability to schedule jobs down to 15-minute resolutions, and has the ability to automatically export and clean up historical jobs.
OASys also provides valuable distribution system reliability information by retrieving outage counts and storing this information in a database that is available for immediate or future analysis of power delivery reliability. OASys can bring back the line voltage indication register from DCSI’s AMI modules. Utility-defined threshold values for these counters turn this wealth of data into near-real-time knowledge regarding the state of the distribution system. This knowledge aids the utility in scheduling normal system maintenance rather than responding to after-hours emergency failures. OASys does not need to be performing an outage assessment to acquire outage count data.
