Web map services (WMS) are becoming increasingly important in the GIS world. Web map services are GIS layers sent as “screen shots” from a data providing web server to a requesting client viewer. A variety of clients can view WMS services - ArcGIS, Google Earth, map-enabled web sites – which allows for flexibility in getting geographic information to end users. There is also a wide variety of content available although it tends to focus on base layers such as administrative boundaries and transportation networks and imagery such as aerial photography. WMS services are commonly free and require almost no maintenance so your utility can concentrate more time and money on its own data. Relying on WMS services for some data, however, means you are at the mercy of the data provider’s server stability and speed, choice of symbology, and data quality.
GP&L has reduced duplicate data entry by integrating several departments’ work directly into their centralized ESRI geodatabase. The GIS team implemented two new solutions to accomplish this goal: A web solution - Geodatabase Asset Management Extension (GAME) and a field solution – Field Asset Capture Extension (FACE). These two components allow back office warehouse and asset management users along with various field crews to access and enter asset data that feeds directly into an ESRI GIS. This has allowed GP&L to greatly reduce paper transactions while providing significant gains in asset management tracking and reporting. The GIS has now become the primary source for all financial asset reporting which has set the stage for a future Asset Management software implementation. Join us in reviewing GP&L trek from disparate data entry to an integrated, intelligent GIS solution.
As utilities strive to balance the multiple constraints of reliability, safety and profitability with new mandates for efficiency and a reduced carbon footprint, geospatial technology is positioned to become the cornerstone of a decision support system to evaluate demand response programs, leverage advanced metering and Smart Grid technologies, and deploy alternative energy sources and other green initiatives. GIS aggregates together the network distribution view with historical meter to directly support demand response. Traditionally strong in the environmental arena, GIS can incorporate green initiative models and financial data about costs to operate sections of the network, in order to facilitate analysis and spatially-enabled business intelligence. GIS also directly supports development of a staged deployment plan that targets areas with the greatest payback to front-load benefits in the AMI and Smart Grid business cases. Geospatial technology allows the Utility of the Future to balance environmental mandates with responsibilities to shareholders.
At United Power, the engineering and GIS groups were tasked with answering the following question, “Will we have the infrastructure to support future demand in 5 or 10 years?” We turned to spatial technologies to provide management with an accurate and detailed GIS-generated load density forecast. Demand and energy readings from CIS were integrated with GIS to produce base grids for summer and winter peaks. The analysts combined base load grids with 2 forecast sources to produce long-range forecast raster grids. The complex analysis process was performed with multiple Model Builder models for consistency and repeatability. ESRI’s Spatial Analyst extension performed raster analysis. By maintaining a spatial history of power consumption, accurate data is readily available for a plethora of statistical studies and testing what-if scenarios. Using GIS technologies for planning purposes increases forecast accuracy and efficiency and creates a roadmap for future land and ROW acquisitions.
Long Beach Gas and Oil (LBGO) provides natural gas service to about 91,000 customer accounts in Southern California. LBGO recently implemented an enterprise GIS based on ESRI products. Concurrent with the implementation of the GIS, LBGO implemented a mobile mapping solution and regulatory compliance application.
Like many utilities still tracking leak information using outdated mainframes and spreadsheets that do not allow easy access for multiple users, LBGO saw the need to create a more efficient process for tracking leaks. By integrating the compliance application with the mobile mapping solution and their enterprise ESRI GIS, LBGO created a single point of entry for Leak Reporting and Management which has automated much of what had been a very manual and paper oriented process. This presentation will look at the approach used to streamline LBGO’s multi-stage process of managing leaks, from discovery to repair, along with their ability to easily demonstrate regulatory compliance.
Developing a wind power facility is a complex process. It requires development and meteorology teams to evaluate a potential site on a wide range of criteria, including wind resource quality, ability to obtain permits, access to transmission, impact on the surrounding environment, consistency with current land uses and constructability. This presentation will take a look at diverse applications of GIS for the development of wind power. Topics will include the role of GIS in site selection, turbine placement, detailed constraints mapping, mobile applications, and its increasing role in the operation of existing wind power facilities.
This is the story of the City of Anaheim's trials and tribulations through CAD conversion, data amalgamation, and integration. Systems that are covered include Asset Management, Work Management, CIS, and OMS. Current developments in AMR, SCADA, and other systems will be touched on as well. Many lessons have been learned and will be shared.
Field inventory is one of the most costly projects to implement, or is it? Yes, you have to dedicate qualified staff in an industry where everyone is understaffed! Yes, the process takes a long time and we need the information now! The question is not what the costs of doing field inventory are, but what the costs of not doing field inventory are. Many companies struggle with this. Let us show how we started to offset some of these costs and what benefits have helped to offset these costs.
Power delivery organizations struggle to minimize cost yet improve reliability. For transmission systems, wood poles typically make up seventy-five percent of the structures on system. GIS spatial analysis can be used to identify the most effective use of budget dollars on pole change outs. The objective of this research is threefold: A) to utilize GIS to visualize the location of wood poles on system; B) to forecast the effects of capital improvements as they impact budget, labor, and reliability; C) to animate statistical models demonstrating positive and negative impacts on budget, labor, and reliability for decision-making.
This presentation will discuss the use of ArcGIS technology to create good landbase data including where to find landbase images and how to keep facility and landbase information up-to-date. For a small electric utility it is not feasible to spend a lot of time and money to collect landbase information. By identifying free and affordable sources of data it is possible to adjust and geo-reference facility locations, design drawings and shape-files, and correct impedance length. The presentation will also include helpful tips and tricks for using ArcGIS with online geospatial resources to edit facility and landbase data.
This presentation will describe the process Georgia Power Company and the Southern Company Services IT Department went through to jointly implement their GIS System. With an organization this large, there are always “rules” enforced by the IT Organization that the Business Unit does not understand or agree with. On the flip side, there are also business “reasons” to move forward with things that the IT Organization does not understand or agree with. This presentation will focus on the process used by these two organizations to work through these issues and ultimately team up to implement, train and maintain an efficient GIS system.
There are many questions about CAD and GIS interoperability, and the answer is design data/facilities management interoperability. Moving data among systems is really a minor technology question. The challenges are the differences in data and how it's used between different functions. Learn how these issues affect data migration and how to work with them to integrate the design with facilities management processes.
ESRI technology is changing the way utilities approach GPS field inventory and verification projects. ArcGIS Engine provides the toolset to create specialized mobile data collection applications that work with a utility's existing geodatabase schema and facilities data. Geodatabase replication functionality in ArcGIS Server (beginning with 9.2) allows utilities and their vendors to verify and correct facilities attributes and to spatially adjust locations to sub-meter accuracy -- all within the SDE version framework. The Davey Resource Group has pioneered in these technologies for GPS inventory and verification, and in the process it has found a efficiency-boosting replacement for its AutoCAD-based tools that required data conversions for ArcGIS projects. This presentation details on the technologies and methodologies that are working for Davey and that can be leveraged by end users seeking to improve the quality of their GIS data.
ESRI is the world leader in Spatially Enabled Technology, with growing use of ArcGIS Server and other Web technologies supporting thousands of users worldwide. Microsoft’s Sharepoint Portal Technology is increasing its worldwide impact daily with over a 100 million seats in place, and seek to expand its use further with the addition of Microsoft PerformancePoint, a new Business Intelligence Technology. By integrating these solutions in Enspiria’s Enterprise Oriented Architecture (EOA), Utility users now have the potential to empower more users to make critical Business Decisions using spatial enabled Key Performance Data.
In recent years, gas companies have been increasingly focused on the issue of pipe deterioration in order to satisfy new regulatory requirements - such as the upcoming Distribution Integrity legislation- and to meet safety, operating, and financial objectives. Knowing when and where to focus investments is critical to meeting these objectives and maintaining a safe network. The implementation of a mains replacement program in tandem with other planning information can offer a formalized methodology to meet these regulatory obligations and improve systems reliability. Through the use of predictive calculations, the correct level of capital investment and the sequence of replacements can be determined.
Once the decision was made to maintain our electric infrastructure in GIS only, we knew we needed to model it so it could be put into a Geometric Network in the future. We quickly learned there are hints to doing this correctly, that save significant time and effort. In this session we will review tips and lessons learned to help utilities going through the same process. For example, we learned that fuses needed to be offset from the poles in the direction that they were protecting. Another hurdle we had to overcome was making sure that everything that was part of the network was correctly snapped. This process could have been extremely time consuming, however we used a Network Evaluator tool to quickly highlight those areas and zoom to the location in ESRI to make the necessary changes.
The Intelligent Utility Enterprise (IUE) is the goal of literally hundreds of utilities across the US and around the world. Sierra Energy Group conducts on-going research of the IUE market and the dynamics of this evolving marketplace from both the technical and business perspectives. This presentation will present research-based progress to-date in the industry and will provide perspectives of the road to "The Promised Land" where utilities will be meeting and exceeding their business (regulatory, operational, customer, financial) challenges... maybe even in real-time.
Georgia Power Company (GPC) Forestry and ROW Services is charged with managing approximately 12,000 miles of electric transmission rights-of-way across GPC’s service territory. Tracking ROW encroachments and managing ROW acquisition projects is the job of 10 ROW Specialists and the Supervisor of Forestry and ROW Services.
As part of a general technology upgrade project being managed by the Transmission Maintenance and Support Group, GPC worked with a TC Technology to develop a field-based solution that integrated with GPC’s existing transmission maintenance database and geographic information system (GIS) to develop a fit-for-purpose ROW maintenance application.
Using rugged laptops, GPC ROW Specialists are equipped with all the information needed to accurately and efficiently record right of way information and manage ROW projects. The users are able to import aerial inspection results; add, delete, and modify encroachment records in the field; and manage the entire ROW encroachment business process while on location.
In addition, the mobile GIS solution provides ROW Specialists with tools for query, analysis and reporting while in disconnected mode, and hands-free automatic synchronization with other corporate systems while in connected mode.
The gap between information and data is ever increasing as thousands of new smart devices are placed throughout the power system. GIS is a critical technology needed to distill meaningful information from these data sources. This paper seeks to inform readers about the use of GIS and other power system information tools that enable a smart grid.
Utility organizations have an increasing need to deploy sophisticated business applications that are highly integrated with GIS (such as work management, mobile/field technologies, damage prevention, system planning, outage management, etc.). These applications often require spatially accurate data to meet the demands of their ever changing business, workflow, and regulatory environments. Spatial inaccuracies in your GIS data may limit how effectively these applications can be used across the enterprise thereby diminishing the value and return on these technology investments. Utilities requiring an accurate land base are faced with many challenges when considering how to upgrade and integrate the new applications while at the same time moving to a spatially accurate geodatabase. Challenges include determining the accurate location of existing facility assets, creating a new spatially accurate location for all existing facilities, leveraging commercially available land base data with existing investments in GIS, maintaining future data integrity, and the on-going maintenance of a spatially accurate facilities data base. Learn about the business drivers for implementing an enterprise land base and how South Carolina Electric & Gas has approached the implementation challenges through the land base lifecycle. Hear about the process and associated tools for keeping the land base up-to-date and the implications this has for keeping facility assets placed accurately.
The ArcGIS Publisher extension is an affordable solution for deploying disconnected mobile field applications on a laptop or tablet PC. However, the limited functionality of the ArcReader control may reduce its appeal. Nonetheless, a good deal of ArcObjects functionality that is normally "hidden" may be exposed through the use of custom layers in the PMF. The examples presented: A) display a GPS point, B) locate a street intersection, and C) edit a simple feature class.
Georgia Power Company’s GIS Implementation has provided many levels of challenges, including: An Engineering and Mapping community with high expectations; A tight schedule with overlapping projects; A ton of systems hungry for fast accurate data quickly; and a Management Team beating the Asset Management Drum. Learn how this project solved the technical, change management and production issues using a combination of technology and teamwork—and where they are headed next.
ArcGIS Server 9.3 has many new capabilities such as support for
JavaScript and the PostgreSQL database. This presentation will discuss how
these new capabilities in ArcGIS Server 9.3 can be leveraged to deliver GIS
map viewing and access to enterprise databases on BlackBerry smartphones. Topics
will include the different platforms used to program GIS and database driven
applications for BlackBerry smartphones, the architecture and back end resources
needed to use BlackBerry smartphones with ArcGIS Server 9.3, and the advantages
and constraints of using BlackBerry smartphones for field mapping and database
applications. The presentation will also cover how executive/management level
users and field crews can benefit from deploying GIS to BlackBerry smartphones.
There is hardly a day in our industry that goes by without mention of the Smart Grid and the promise that it will bring. That isn’t surprising since the potential benefits are many. The intelligent network can deliver significant increases in energy efficiency by providing smarter energy management. A truly intelligent grid also means a higher rate of return on capital investments and potentially large savings on the operational side for utilities.
Utilities that have adapted their workflow and embraced enterprise GIS are well positioned to support their Smart Grid initiatives since they have already invested in an accurate representation of their assets. The advantage they have is in the ability to dynamically extract their network representation from the GIS for use by their real-time applications (the applications that make Smart Operations possible). Those sorts of extract routines are not necessarily a new approach. However, utilities are now able to consider maintaining a representation of that network on a real-time integration bus. As everyday changes occur in the GIS, the network data on the real-time bus is kept up to date. That ability allows for a single representation of the network for sharing between these applications that is owned and maintained by the GIS.
For some utilities, the role of GIS in the Smart Grid vision is simply around graphical representation. However, the real benefits of GIS are only going to be achieved though the real-time coupling of the GIS to these real-time systems. This is a new way of looking at it. Even for those utilities that have made the investment, GIS is often thought of as an enterprise system but not necessarily a mission critical system. In order for the modern utility to start reaping the benefits of the intelligent consumer-driven grid, the perception of GIS will need to make this organizational shift. That implies a significant investment in enterprise GIS and changes in workflow. Additionally, the underlying assumption for this to be successful is for GIS to be treated as a mission critical aspect of the business. As that transition takes place, the real-time applications that drive the smart grid will be able to maximize the use of the most current spatial information.
Henkels & McCoy was recently challenged by the City of Riverside Public Utility as part of a bid proposal to inspect 12,000 utility poles using an all-digital inspection solution. This solution had to allow inspectors to view maps, navigate, capture inspection results, redline field notes, and most of all relate field pictures with inspections.
Using TC Technologies "GO Sync" software coupled with software from Ricoh Corporation a system for transferring pictures from field tablet's to the Server was created. Specifically, the FTP feature of "GO Sync" was used to transfer photos and Ricoh "Data Manager" software was used to rename and imprint photos.
In the field, inspectors used Ricoh 500SE camera to rename photos using the bar coding scanning feature to read pole ID labels from their tablet screen. Pictures where then transferred from the camera to the tablet by the inspectors, which are then renamed, synchronized and imprinted by the "GO Sync" and Ricoh "Data Manager" software.
This presentation will cover the challenges inherent in implementing a major GIS project. Topics will include data modeling; data conversion/migration; gap analysis; collaborative design, programming, configuration, and testing; expectation management, issue management, and risk management. We will also discuss strategies for successful training, deployment, and post-deployment support.
In an effort to continually improve how the Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) maintains its seven hundred miles of transmission lines, VELCO’s Right-of-Way Management Department has begun using mobile computing technology to map the vegetation located within its rights-of-way. To collect the data, VELCO has deployed a custom ESRI ArcPAD application on three tablet computers with internal GPS receivers. The maps created from the data can then be used to acquire more accurate budgetary quotes from vegetation management companies and to better communicate with the State of Vermont the work VELCO will be conducting.
The presentation will discuss the technology that was evaluated, the application that was developed for collecting the data and how the system has improved how VELCO manages its rights-of-way.
Severe weather has a significant impact on many aspects of utility operations. Did you know that even a 1° F improvement in temperature prediction will result in $1 Billion in annual savings to power companies? Weather affects you, your employees, your customers, the people in your communities and service areas and has a significant impact to a utility company’s bottom line.
John Bosse, Meteorologist, Director of WeatherBug Professional, will provide
examples of how and why weather impacts electric utility operations, as well
as underline recent scenarios where weather has had a crucial influence. Additionally,
Mr. Bosse will discuss utility governance and management, discuss the impacts
of weather on utility operations, and provide risk mitigation and business
continuity guidance for utility owners, operators, and users.
Attendees will learn the following from Mr. Bosse’s presentation:
Key impacts and effects that weather has on the electric utility industry
What you can do today to be the most prepared
The most effective and efficient ways to prepare and protect your linemen, employees, customers, and communities before severe weather strikes
How to reduce risk while increasing revenue from the large economic impact weather has on the utilities’ bottom line
Prior to beginning a large multi-state conversion project, NiSource developed a QA/QC process to ensure that any data incorporated into our corporate GIS was both "clean" from a GIS perspective and adequately represented the data on NiSource's existing source documents. The process needed to be streamlined enough to allow for the validation of massive amounts of data in a limited time, with limited resources. This presentation will discuss the overall QA/QC methodology applied by NiSource and the techniques and tools used to ensure data quality.
By integrating GIS and CIS technology, Greenville Utilities Commission has focused on maintaining high quality customer service and improved business processes by mapping our Customer Information Systems (CIS). Presented are the valuable lessons learned during the integration process.
Spatially enabling customer data provides several benefits including; analysis of customer locations, consumption\billing analysis, meter inventory and work management. Although GUC is continuing to develop applications, several business process have already benefited from the integration, including customer notification during a water emergency and a storm event call tracking application.
The lessons learned during the process will help guide future development and will be valuable for any organization interested in pursuing the implementation of similar technologies.
Located in Eastern North Carolina, Greenville Utilities Commission (GUC) provides Electric, Water, Sewer and Natural Gas services to Pitt County with a combined total of more than 135,800 customer connections.
Albuquerque experienced a 15.92 % increase in population from 1990 to 2000 and is expected to reach the one million mark by 2020 or an additional 123% increase. Because of the nature of surface ownership surrounding the city, the majority of this increase will occur through the in-fill process.
One area of concern for PNM, New Mexico’s largest investor owned utility, is the protection of reliability of it’s utility infrastructure. Through cooperation with the City of Albuquerque Planning Department PNM is using GIS to show engineers and planners the proximity of our facilities to planned development.
This presentation will discuss the intricacies of bringing in data from various sources in various formats to provide the company with a sufficient, accurate knowledge to make decisions in a one-hour time period that used to take sometimes over a week.
ArcGIS Mobile provides a new and exciting tool in viewing and editing GIS data in the field. In this presentation, we'll look at the ArcGIS Mobile technology to better understand the benefits it brings to utilities. Several Utility specific applications of this software will be discussed and demonstrated during this discussion. In addition, case studies of several utilities utilizing ArcGIS Mobile, through 3-GIS's Field Express software, will be made, showing how the new technology is being utilized in the field, including Transmission Structure Inspection, ROW Management and Vegetation Management.
Traditional electricity distribution reliability measures such as SAIFI, SAIDI, and CAIDI are generally a reflection of averages over fixed boundaries (e.g. a town, district, or state) or entire circuits. A complementary metric, CEMI-n (Customers Experiencing Multiple Interruptions), provides a slightly different measure from the customer perspective: the percentage of customers who have experienced at least n interruptions over a given time frame.
This paper not only describes why National Grid intends to implement the CEMI metric, but also investigates potential application of the CEMI concept to GIS – essentially, generation of "geo-CEMI" datasets. By filtering various interruption cause codes, this data can assist in geographically pinpointing specific reliability issues such as vegetation, equipment deterioration, lightning, motor vehicle accidents, or animal contacts. This enables new possibilities for spatial analysis and visual representation of impacts to system reliability; at a glance, geo-CEMI can expose geographic pockets of poor performance which were previously masked under traditional state, town, and feeder level analysis.
Burbank Water and Power is faced with many decisions while incorporating
their Intelligent Infrastructure. Learn what they are doing to prepare the
GIS for a “Smart Grid” initiative. How to prepare your GIS for all of the
new pieces of the puzzle while utilizing the intelligence of your existing
systems. One example will be transformer load management, calculated from the
CIS tie to your meter reads. This approach is Semi-Intelligent now, but will
be “Smart” when meters can be polled at near real time.
Alabama Power, A Southern Company, is committed to providing the highest level of electric service reliability and customer satisfaction possible. They have laid the ground work for Smart Grid operation of their distribution system with extensive IT infrastructure as well as automation in the field. DistGIS is Southern Company's deployment of ESRI GIS technology and this system is a pillar of their Distribution Operations program. This presentation will discuss the evolution of DistGIS at Alabama Power, and the how it will interact with their new Integrated Distribution Management System (IDMS). IDMS will combine GIS, SCADA, OMS, DMS, and AMI functionality, leading to even smarter operation of their distribution network. The IDMS project is associated with the DOE's GridWise Program.
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