Telvent has announced that its GIS-based Responder Outage Management System is being credited for helping reduce outage time for customers of Green Mountain Power. The outage management software helped the Vermont utility rebound from devastating winter weather that pounded its southern Vermont service territory - and much of the New England region - in December 2008.
“It was extremely helpful to have Responder in production during our recent, very significant storm event,” reported Josh Castonguay, lead engineer. “We honestly feel that it assisted in reducing the outage time for a large number of customers, due to the efficiency with which we could dispatch crews.”
Green Mountain Power transmits, distributes and sells electricity and utility construction services to approximately one-fourth of the state’s population. With fewer than 200 employees, the efficient Vermont electric provider exceeded its reliability service quality standards in 2008, including standards set by state regulators.
“We aim to exceed these results in the future so that we can provide even better service to our customers,” said Mary Powell, Green Mountain Power president and chief executive officer. “Investments in system upgrades have had a direct effect on improving system reliability.”
Among those system upgrades was the implementation of Telvent’s ArcFM Geographic Information System (GIS), put into service in September 2008 to manage electric system assets. Green Mountain Power has taken advantage of the open architecture of the ArcFM geodatabase - which now identifies network substations, 94,000 meters, and all load points in between - by integrating it with multiple applications that support its various business functions. One of these applications is the Telvent Responder Outage Management System (OMS), interfaced with interactive voice recognition (IVR) and automated vehicle location (AVL) systems and used by dispatchers and field supervisors to help steer outage response.
