Monday Breakout Sessions

It's well known that a complete and accurate representation of the electrical distribution (and in some cases transmission) network is a fundamental requirement for enabling sophisticated Smart Grid technologies. It's also known that the ArcGIS geodatabase is the most appropriate technology for hosting, maintaining and serving access to this network. An unknown can be the quality of data in the Geodatabase and the applicability of this data to the demands of Smart Grid applications.

This session will review key expectations on a Geodatabase-hosted electric network model applied by distribution management and advanced metering applications and will identify some of the things you can do to prepare your database for supporting Smart Grid apps.

This presentation will allow you to answer the following types of questions: how GIS can be used to aid in planning your SMI meter deployments (Customer Segmentation Analysis—Who gets their SMI meter first? How Many SMI RF or Mesh Take Out Points Do I Need?), track SMI meter deployment status (Can you hear me know? Did you get all of my interval meter data? Where are the mean dogs? Which of my two SMI vendor finalists are performing better? Where are my SMI vendors having their problems?), plan your distribution automation deployments (Smart Grid Segmentation Analysis—Where do I install my IEDs?), how to know if your GIS is ready for the new wave of Smart Grid killer applications like FDIR (Self-Healing) and VVO (Be Green)? The last topic to be covered will be: GIS becomes the linchpin for your Smart Grid Enterprise Asset Management Environment.

GIS-based applications have come a long way in the last 10 years and electric and gas utilities stand to benefit greatly. GIS data can now be easily viewed and utilized by anybody in the utility—over the Web, in the field, even on Blackberry and iPhone devices.

These new applications make GIS more accessible, adaptable and also help a utility get much more value from its GIS investment. This presentation will include an overview of the new server based GIS and case studies of how electric and gas utilities successfully use the new GIS technology in the field and in the office.

The cost of building, operating and maintaining buried assets is enormous. In addition, a typical locate ticket may contain several buried utilities along with abandoned features and unknown components. Utilities and municipalities are looking for a cost effective way to efficiently manage assets, minimize operating costs and quickly restore outages. The use of passive markers to locate buried asset started several years ago. Due to the advances in GPS technology, the integration of GPS with the passive markers became a reality. However the passive markers did not provide any information regarding the buried asset. With the availability of RFID markers, low cost GPS receivers and field data collection software, utilities are now using active RFID markers with GPS receivers to map in GIS, locate and identify buried asset very quickly and efficiently even before digging. The presentation will cover how this technology is being actively used in real world.

The main objective is to present the business benefits of SAP-ESRI integration at data, process and interface levels for optimizing asset and work management in Utility companies. Alongside the benefits, it will present the main integration scenarios and how GISConneX technology helps Utility companies to leverage SAP and ESRI investments through a packaged SAP-ESRI integration approach.

New Mexico Gas Company is a recently formed gas transmission and distribution service provider within the state of New Mexico. We operate and maintain over 1,600 miles of gas transmission lines within New Mexico spread across five operational areas. As part of understanding statewide scope of transmission access maintenance requirements, the Land Services department utilized ESRI ArcGIS 9.3 with the Spatial Analyst extension to model our transmission system and identify areas of high erosion potential to be used for O&M cost budgeting and maintenance resource allocation. By systematically modeling the system on a statewide scale, we are able to deploy our limited resources where they return the maximum benefit. This modeling removes a lot of subjective operational components from the decision making process.

Utilities are actively involved in overhauling every aspect of their business to become more "green", implementing Smart Grid technologies, smart meters and energy efficiency programs to encourage customers to use energy resources wisely. In 2004, the Ontario Minister of Energy mandated the installation and use of smart meters province-wide. Hydro One has installed more than 1,000,000 smart meters and expects to complete rollout throughout the province in 2010. In addition, Hydro One is actively engaged in soliciting services to build the next-generation Smart Grid. Key to all of this is the connected network model provided by the GIS, together with complete, correct and current data. Hydro One is building a next generation dataset that consolidates current transmission and distribution assets and asset condition together with current operational information as well as load forecasts and real-time usage data obtained from smart meters to support the Smart Grid, and in particular to support distributed generation (DG). This paper will discuss both technical and business process challenges and opportunities faced in making the GIS "Smart Grid Ready".

Have you ever been told your utility is the only organization that needs a particular functionality in ArcGIS/ArcFM? Have you ever had a business requirement that you could not meet with the software? Well, chances are someone else out there has encountered the same obstacle, and may have a work-around (or even a solution) for you. In this session, we will provide a moderated forum to discuss these situations. We will discuss our work-arounds, and we want to hear any issues or solutions you may have.

In New York State electric utilities are required by law to perform general maintenance inspections on all facilities once every five years as well as testing all facilities accessible by the public once a year for stray voltage. Each of these entails physically visiting each and every asset owned by the utility. At the end of each a report must be submitted detailing problems found and when and how they were repaired. In order to tackle this we've used a combination of an ArcSDE database (SQL Server), ArcGIS, ArcPad, and Microsoft Access. We do all assessment in the field using a Trimble Juno running ArcPad with custom forms built in ArcPad Studio. A field crew supervisor has access to work orders generated through custom reports built in Microsoft Access detailing the severity, location, and type of repairs that need to be done. Data entry forms, also built in Access, and launched through ArcGIS are used to enter repairs made by field crews on problems found through the field assessment. Access is also used for reporting at the end of the project. We've found further use for these applications and have adapted these Access forms for pole joint use assessment and management as well. I feel that ArcGIS users would find use in this as it is a very simple, workable, and affordable solution using "off-the-shelf" software to complex problems similar to what I'm sure utilities everywhere face and would share all with anyone.

Utilities have discovered the importance that GIS has in their economic development organization and their role in growing the economy of the areas they serve. As a result, Georgia Power's Economic Development group is using the power of GIS to showcase available properties and other key datasets to its users in a highly intuitive GIS Web environment. They understand that having a state of the art GIS Web application is critical in order to maintain its role as a leader in economic development in the state. With its SelectGeorgia.net GIS Web application, Georgia Power has continued its long history of leveraging innovations in GIS technology to attract new business and retain existing industries.

The session will cover how Georgia Power went about setting up their economic development GIS capabilities and how they are using state of the art GIS and enterprise Web technology that has recently won them ESRI's Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award to create an exciting user experience that has been highly successful in creating wealth in Georgia.

Power-A Southern Company is committed to providing the highest level of electric service reliability and customer satisfaction possible.

This presentation will discuss the development of graphics used at Alabama Power to display customer outages employing ESRI GIS technology. We will discuss a real time display which has enabled us to become more efficient in restoring customer service when there is an outage. This discussion will also include the creation of graphics of past storms which helps to analyze storm outages, restoration efforts and in preparation for future events.