Alstom has delivered a new Outage Management System (OMS) to Alabama Power. The new system will help the company to minimize outage durations and better inform customers and internal management about outage status and restoration efforts.
The addition of the OMS ensures more efficient and faster decision making for Alabama Power’s distribution grid operators, especially during large scale outage restoration efforts, ultimately improving service to their 1.4 million customers. In preparation for system acceptance, Alabama Power’s new OMS performance testing was simulated using Alstom’s integrated Distribution Operations Training Simulator (DOTS) and was based on some of the largest storms that may impact the Alabama Power Co.’s service territory - with more than one million customers out, using DOTS generated inputs of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), and customer calls with over 160 concurrent users of the Integrated Distribution Management System (IDMS).
“DOTS has been one of the most valuable aspects of cutting over to the new system because it allows us not only to test the system but also provides an initial and on-going training environment for our personnel that replicates real world scenarios. We do not need to experience the next major hurricane to find out if our systems will perform and the DOTS will ensure the system will perform in any magnitude storm that may impact our service territory and customers.” said Bill Mintz, manager of Distribution Management Systems at Alabama Power who has been leading the project from its inception.
Based on Alstom Grid’s e-terra distribution platform, the OMS is built for high availability and performance during major storm events, as well as routine maintenance outages. Designed to handle over 200,000 trouble calls per hour, the OMS provides distribution grid operators more accurate information and enhanced overall visibility to better manage electricity network outages. The OMS also captures and integrates all available data to automatically calculate performance indices, ensuring accuracy and confidence in overall outage reporting metrics.
“Alabama Power chose Alstom’s OMS, as part of its advanced Integrated Distribution Management System upgrade to replace its legacy, disparate systems and they provided inspiration for our latest technology.” said Karim El Naggar, vice president of Alstom Grid’s Network Management Solutions business.
