Avoiding Disaster: The Need for an Integrated DOME Model

The idea of disaster management may not necessarily have been in the books of electrical utility companies, but recovery from sudden power outages is critical for the consumers of their services. Regulatory bodies in some countries are enforcing stringent rules to expedite restoration of power disrupted by storms, cyclones, and hurricanes. Compensation to be paid by the suppliers against delayed repair works can run into millions of dollars.

What causes these utility companies to be unprepared for interruptions to their services? The reasons have been attributed to the legacy IT systems that are poorly integrated and contain limited information for responding to disasters in short turnaround times. To analyze the impact of a sudden weather change on the assets that regulate power distribution, data must be extracted from both, meteorological stations and asset management systems.

The analysis of the information received from all sources is then followed by an action plan and dispatch of the crew to mend the damages, and restore supply. However, such reactive processes are time and labor intensive resulting only in rising costs for the utility companies.

Disaster recovery processes need to be more pro-active than what the industry has been following for decades. Intelligently integrated systems for location-based Disasters Operations Management (DOM) would help utility companies to be more prepared for calamities. Data sources such as LiDAR, Internet of Things sensors, and 3D imagery can also be used for improved decision making.

By adopting a predictive and data-based approach, electric power suppliers can improve their responsiveness to disasters that disrupt their services. They already have access to a pool of data and smart technology. These simply need to be utilized now to build a strong DOM model.

Tarun Bhandari, GM for Location Based Services at Cyient, authored a guest column for the Energy Digital magazine on how leading global utilities can harness the power of integration for disaster Operations Management.

 

 

Originally published in the October 2017 issue of the Energy Digital magazine.