How Does a Medium-Sized Electric Utility Move from Legacy to Vendor-Developed mission-critical applications at an affordable price? Hawaiian Electric Co. (Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.) confronted this very problem as it entered the first decade of the 21^st century.

The utility was determined to bring its customers the same services and reliability as larger investor-owned utilities (IOUs). However, Hawaiian Electric had just 300,000 customers — not the million or more that are common at mainland IOUs — to bear the cost of change. In addition, the utility's staff was not large enough to dedicate a significant number of employees to new software implementation while others handled ongoing tasks. Clearly, careful planning and attention to detail were needed to move Hawaiian Electric forward with its application technology improvements.

MOVING FORWARD

In 2002, the utility announced a new technology strategy to support its emphasis on reliability. While relatively stable for volcanic islands, Hawaii's volcanic activity results in the occasional earthquake that can significantly disrupt power delivery. The most recent earthquake, in October 2006, disrupted power to all Hawaiian Electric customers.

Additionally, while hurricanes may strike the islands once every eight to 10 years, strong winds and heavy rain can result in major outages. And unlike mainland utilities, Hawaiian Electric has no nearby utilities from which it can readily buy power; each of the Hawaiian islands is a self-contained grid.

Essential to the project's success was Hawaiian Electric's careful coordination of all the new applications it planned to put in place. Through the implementation, Hawaiian Electric wanted to: make sure its customers didn't pay twice for the same functionality; maximize every employee's contribution by eliminating organizational overlap and conflict; and confirm that information entered into one system was replicated accurately in all systems — no entering data twice, no conflicting information in different databases.

FIRST STEPS

Hawaiian Electric focused the first part of its planning on replacing its more than 20-year-old nonideally located dispatch center and its energy management system (EMS), which had reached the end of useful life. The utility went live with those replacements in March 2006 (see Transmission & Distribution World, November 2006).

While useful in increasing reliability, the steps were definitely not enough. In 2005, Hawaiian Electric contracted with what is now Oracle Utilities to implement the outage functionality of its network management system, or that is, its outage management system (OMS). Simultaneously, to ensure full integration with the field crews responsible for outage-restoration repairs, Hawaiian Electric decided to implement Oracle's mobile workforce management (MWM). The two applications had already been integrated at a large mainland utility. And while Hawaiian Electric's situation was not identical, the integration needed was largely already done. Hawaiian Electric knew that implementing these two systems together would eliminate the lack of accountability utilities sometimes experience when multiple vendors attempt to integrate products that rely on different models and assumptions. Hawaiian Electric knew it could save considerable staff time and effort if “the buck stopped” with one vendor committed to Hawaiian Electric's goal to eliminate duplication and overlap.

EXECUTIVE COMMITMENT

Hawaiian Electric's success with the dispatch center and EMS implementation was based on the commitment of full-time executive leadership. Chris Shirai, who led that initiative as vice president of special projects, also headed the OMS-MWM implementation in its early stages. After Shirai retired, executive leadership for the OMS-MWM implementation was provided by Harold Kageura, vice president of energy delivery. He ensured that executives from both Hawaiian Electric and Oracle were fully engaged in the project.

Hawaiian Electric began with a formal, in-person contract signing that helped top executives from both the utility and vendor establish relationships intended to continue throughout the project and through the life of the systems.

Hawaiian Electric reinforced those relationships with a monthly conference call — attended only by executives, not by project managers — to share perspectives on project progress and ways to resolve any issues appearing on the horizon. By limiting attendance to the executive level, Hawaiian Electric ensured that corporate-level executives fully understood all issues and could represent the perspectives of others in their organization. Of course, the calls did not take the place of formal and informal interactions among on-site and off-site members of the project team. They did, however, provide helpful deadlines that ensured a steady stream of deliverables throughout the 22-month implementation process. The calls also helped resolve resource and timing questions, while solidifying relationships to the point where everyone felt comfortable calling each other to address unanticipated issues.

OMS IS THE LINK

Another contributing success factor was Hawaiian Electric's decision to use OMS to link its customer-facing applications:

• OMS manages trouble calls, including the work of the responding crews.

• OMS handles load flow and planned switching implementation. Hawaiian Electric is in its final stages and will be implementing these modules in 2008.

• OMS provides a real-time model of the Hawaiian Electric electrical system, down to the distribution level, during normal operation and major storms. All disptachers know the condition of the system, including where taps were lifted, jumpers were placed, lines were down and trees were in the line.

• OMS works hand in hand with the EMS to enable the utility to handle all events electronically rather than with its previous manual paper trouble-ticket system. When a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) breaker opens on the EMS, it updates the OMS so that additional calls are automatically grouped to that event. Monitors at each of the console work-stations display EMS and OMS information simultaneously.

• OMS works in concert with the MWM for emergency calls using local wireless technology. Radio traffic is reduced slightly as field personnel enter their trouble call remedies into the MWM and submit them to the dispatcher electronically.

• OMS coordinates all work for the crews during storm conditions. OMS information is used by the planning section of Hawaiian Electric's Incident Command Team to prioritize the work required to restore all customers on the system following a large storm, including numerous pocket outages.

• OMS provides the statistics Hawaiian Electric needs to calculate restoration and reliability performance (the customer average interruption duration index [CAIDI} and the system average interruption frequency index [SAIFI]).

• OMS sends outage information to the customer-service representative (CSR) and informs the CSR if the current caller is part of an existing or a new outage. Information on planned outages is sent to the new CIS system to help the CSR decipher between an unplanned or a planned outage.

INTERMEDIATE MILESTONES

By using OMS as a linchpin application, Hawaiian Electric has been able to use the OMS prediction functions to identify the most probable device that the primary troubleman should investigate for a given pattern of customer calls. The utility also knows the state of the Hawaiian Electric system in near-real time, especially at the distribution level where SCADA is limited. The system also provides accurate information to CSRs, corporate communications and commercial account representatives about durations. Along with a slight reduction of the radio system use, information is still exchanged between the dispatcher and the primary troubleman. Finally, OMS is the underpinning of effectively managed work that is required during storm conditions for both one-man troubleshooters and crews.

The improvements made thus far are intermediate milestones along the path to achieving the overall goal to improve customer communication and service through appropriate and fully integrated vendor applications. Hawaiian Electric is evaluating expanding the use of laptops. Currently, the utility uses them for its first-responder crews. Clearly, however, they also have potential for scheduled and nontrouble field work.

Hawaiian Electric also is evaluating wireless technology for remote meter reading and electric service connects/disconnects. The utility previously had a pilot program for a broadband-over-power-line system, but technologies surrounding advanced metering systems are developing so rapidly that the utility decided to look at additional options, so it can make a determination on the combination that will prove most cost effective.

Hawaiian Electric's scheduled repair-order system is being evaluated to determine how the utility can use the MWM application in its normal work-scheduling process. By integrating these technologies with its wide-ranging conservation, efficiency and renewable-energy initiatives, Hawaiian Electric anticipates increasing its ability to contribute to a growing Hawaii economy, and a safe and healthy environment for its customers.

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Shari Ishikawa received a BSEE degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology and an MBA degree from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. As director of the new dispatch project for Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc., she was responsible for installing the dispatch center and EMS-OMS. Currently, as the operations superintendent, system operation, she oversees all of the dispatching functions. Ishikawa started her career at Hawaiian Electric in August 1997 and has held positions in the generation and transmission planning divisions. Previously, she worked as a tech staff engineer for Commonwealth Edison. She is a licensed professional engineer in Hawaii. shari.ishikawa@heco.com

Editor's note: T&D World Editorial Director Rick Bush moderated a webinar in October 2007 highlighting Hawaiian Electric's implementation of Oracle Utilities Network Management System. Shari Ishikawa of Hawaiian Electric and Walter Kalsow of Oracle presented the information and fielded questions from the audience. Listen to the webinar at http://tdworld.com/webinar/.

CORNERSTONE CAMPAIGNS

• New operations dispatch center

• New energy management system with components for a test system, production system, training system and a backup system

• Integrated outage management and mobile workforce management systems

• Customer information system