When the power goes out, Nashville Electric Service (NES; Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.) customers turn to the Internet to access the utility's newly developed, in-house dedicated online outage map to get live, continuously updated restoration and field crew activity information. The online map is linked to the data on the NES outage management system (OMS) and requires little maintenance.

Users can view the high-tech map, which provides valuable information during a power failure about outages across the entire NES service area, or they can narrow their search to a specific neighborhood with the “drill-down” feature. Not only can they see the number of customers who are experiencing outages, but they can see the streets affected and if crews have been assigned to address the problem. The information is updated every 10 minutes. NES officials have tracked impressive results in the number of visitors to its website, specifically the outage map.

“The goal of creating the map was to create an application that would immediately and succinctly communicate outage information to the consumer without having the need for any advanced computing skills or specialized in-home technology other than a decent Internet connection and browser,” states David Purkey, lead systems analyst and programmer at NES.

HOW IT WORKS

The entire process is relatively simple. The Cold Fusion Application Server, from Adobe, fires off an application to query a secure, internal SCADA Mirror database, extracts and assembles the outage totals, generates detailed maps and then transmits the whole package to the company's external web server, where it's ready to be viewed by the customer. In the event of a storm, NES senior management can stay on top of restoration progress from virtually anywhere on the planet. The outage map consists of straight-up HTML code using a Cascading Style Sheet that has been optimized for both Microsoft Explorer and Firefox from Mozilla. The management team and other employees can update the information on demand through an internal version of the software.

NES is one of the 12 largest public electric utilities in the United States, distributing energy to more than 340,000 customers in middle Tennessee. When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 30, 2005, bringing heavy weather to the region, NES had more than 2700 unique visits to the outage map. The number of visits normally averages less than 500, but with more than 100,000 people in the dark — a great many of them in Nashville — it was easy to see why the large increase in numbers. NES experienced a similar spike in April 2006 when tornadoes ripped through middle Tennessee and left 17,000 customers without power.

“The functionality of this map helps customers and media alike know where outages have been reported and how widespread the problem is,” said Teresa Corlew, NES spokesperson. “We've noticed a huge drop in the number of calls from customers seeking restoration information and also from the media requesting the latest data for news reports.”

TRIMMING ON THE WEB

Following hot on the success of the outage map, the utility developed a sister application to more effectively manage its tree-trimming activities. Based on the existing software, all scheduled planning, trimming and removal work can be graphically displayed in the same manner, so that customers can readily see when and where crews will be located. Referred to as the vegetation outage map, the same high-level views and drill-down function are incorporated to display information covering an area as small as 150 square blocks.

“The advantage to working two similar systems like this is that any improvements made to one can be easily imported to the other, which only serves to enhance customer satisfaction. The people of Nashville continue to express their approval at having this new technology only a mouse click away,” noted Purkey.