Computers give us extraordinary computational power, and the Internet gives us ubiquitous access to information. Web-based tools, the next logical step, promise to provide ubiquitous access to computing power. For transmission and distribution companies, Web-based tools are becoming available for operations and planning, and have the potential to reduce cost, increase productivity and enhance revenues.

PacifiCorp (Portland, Oregon, U.S.), an electric utility serving 1.5 million customers in six Western states, is using a Web-based system for outage management, outage reporting, load historian and power-quality monitoring, and has tested Web-based planning software in a pilot study.

The Internet is a network of more than 160 million host computers. The World Wide Web (www or Web) consists of more than 10 billion browser-compatible pages on these hosts. Growth in both is exponential.

The power of the Web is its ubiquity. A common communication protocol (TCP/IP) allows any computer to communicate with any other. A robust network allows communication to occur at any time with near-perfect reliability. Common browser standards (HTML, XML) allow multimedia information to be displayed on any device and operating system. Common programming languages (Java) allow sophisticated Web-based tools to run across these same devices and operating systems. The three basic models for Web-based tools are intranet, application service provider (ASP) and Web services.

An intranet is a network of computers (typically within a company) that uses Internet technology and protocols. Intranet tools are applications that run on a standard browser but are hosted within a company's network, which reduces installation and maintenance cost. After a tool is installed on the server, all computers have instant access. When the tool is upgraded to a new version, all computers have instant access to the new version.

A drawback to intranet tools is that they require a network connection. This is becoming less of a constraint as virtual private network (VPN) technology allows seamless connection to intranets whenever an Internet connection can be established. However, don't plan on using your intranet tools on airplanes in the near future.

An ASP hosts Web-based tools on the Internet. Use is similar to intranet tools, but payment is typically based on subscription fees. There are many compelling reasons to consider ASP tools. First, the ASP owns all of the servers, related hardware and maintenance responsibilities. Unless your company has a core competency in computer-server operation, it is probably best to outsource this function. Second, ASP tools are rented and do not appear on balance sheets. Last, ASP tools never face obsolescence; the latest technology is always available to subscribers. In recent years, the ASP market has doubled every year and is expected to reach US$11 billion of the $200 billion software market in 1993.

The biggest barrier to some ASP tools is bandwidth. Many utility applications require a vast amount of data, and transporting this data back and forth across the Web can erode performance. Similarly, many utility applications require sophisticated user interfaces that would have to be downloaded at the beginning of each session. Historically, bandwidth restrictions have limited ASP applications to those capable of using browser-based user interfaces and requiring moderate-to-low amounts of data transfer to and from these interfaces. As bandwidth constraints relax, expect most tools to become available through an ASP.

Security is another ASP concern. Many utilities are simply not comfortable having a third party host sensitive data and having this data transported across the Internet. With current security and encryption technology such as HTTPS (Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol), security risk is minimal and generally should not be an objection to ASP tools.

Web services are software components that can be spontaneously discovered and used over the Internet. A central registry contains XML files describing the functionality, inputs and outputs of each Web service. This allows computational functionality to be located, used and paid for automatically. ASP tools could use Web services, Web services could use other Web services, and utilities could use Web services directly to build modular applications. The potential is vast, but Web services are still in their infancy and have not found their way into T&D-specific applications.

PacifiCorp's service territory serves 750 communities and spans 135,000 sq miles (349,648 sq km). Because of its diverse service territory, PacifiCorp gets outage management information from two centralized dispatch centers that use ABB's CADOPS outage management system to PacifiCorp's many local operations service centers.

PacifiCorp selected ABB's Web-application netCADOPS to allow local operations personnel to view and query outage and operational information without compromising the performance of the CADOPS operational environment. When local areas take control of outage response during storm management, this Web application provides rapid mobilization of support personnel, increasing early access to time-critical information and reducing or eliminating travel requirements, thus improving response to adverse situations.

PacifiCorp also uses a Web application for outage reporting. Each morning, distribution operations, engineering and management employees review the previous days circuit operations through the Web-based PROSPER morning report. The report is generated from CADOPS data and comments are added by dispatch. It includes summary SAIDI and customer guarantee statistics for the day and year-to-date cumulative numbers, and compares these to corporate goals. PROSPER allows the Web user to drill down to individual outage details, such as time stamp operations and the number of customers affected by each event. PROSPER is also used to generate regulatory-required outage statistics.

PacifiCorp also uses a Web-based viewing tool for feeder maps called Operations Visualization System (OVS). This Web application is built on AutoDesk's Mapguide software to display the same distribution feeder data CADOPS uses. Via a browser, users can turn on or off various layers of mapping details from the substation down to customer services. Land-base features are also included along with number of real-time links: trouble calls, outages and crew status. PacifiCorp also provides substation loading information to OVS so that maps can be generated to display color-coded substation locations to represent peak-load substation transformer utilization. OVS is equipped with excellent reporting capabilities to generate detailed asset listings or summary statistics on selected areas or feeders.

Substation and circuit load data is critical to the operation and planning of all aspects of T&D infrastructure. Historical loading data is used to justify annual capital expenditure recommendations for distribution substation and circuit-capacity projects. Because of PacifiCorp's large number of rural substations, only 50% of substations are equipped with supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) or other automated methods for capturing load and asset data. Area personnel used to gather the remaining load and asset data via paper-based forms. Area planners and field engineers also had to access data residing within numerous other stand-alone systems in order to assemble a picture of actual loading conditions in the field. This made the planning function and capital project recommendations arduous.

PacifiCorp has nearly completed its new Substation/ Circuits History Of Operational Loads (SCHOOL) project, which will provide remote users with a Web application to analyze load data from a central database. SCHOOL will improve or eliminate manual processes supporting substation inspections, load studies, load forecasting and infrastructure planning. In the near future, PacifiCorp plans to add more advanced applications to SCHOOL, including weather data and forecasts, short- and long-term load forecasts, transformer heat runs and loss-of-life calculations, and other asset management and power-quality applications.

Web applications are ideal for sharing community land-use plans and utility T&D plans. PacifiCorp faces a particular challenge keeping up with rapid load growth in its Salt Lake City, Nevada, area. The 2002 Winter Olympics brought national attention to the area. Historical peak demand for the area continues to grow on average at about 5.4% per year, even while post-Olympics regional economic growth has been sluggish.

To improve load forecasts, PacifiCorp has partnered with the Utah League of Cities and Towns and participating communities to help with its land-use planning. The League of Cities is using the Internet to pull local community planning and zoning land-use information into a common GIS model. PacifiCorp, in turn, will use this information for its land-use planning studies.

ABB supported the land-use study using its Foresite planning software. Foresite helps identify where new substations and transmission lines will be needed to support the load growth. The process enables much improved communication with the local communities to get early feedback and support for siting and permitting of new substations and lines.

As a condition to its merger with ScottishPower, PacifiCorp promised to improve reliability to customers in each of its six states, and is in the process of determining how to best meet these reliability goals for the least possible cost. One area of interest is a high-profile residential area in the foothills east of Salt Lake City. PacifiCorp and ABB Consulting collaborated using an ASP solution to investigate reliability improvement strategies. This application, Power Delivery Optimizer (PDO), uses many algorithms common to other ABB products but is accessible over the Internet and supports the ASP model (www2.abbus.com/PDO).

To analyze this study area, a system was extracted from CADOPS, default reliability data was assigned to equipment, and the model was calibrated to historical loading and reliability results. This model is accessible over the Web to both ABB consultants and PacifiCorp planners. Working together, PDO was used to examine existing reliability, determine the root causes of reliability problems and explore the cost effectiveness of various improvement strategies. The table above summarizes the reliability strategies generated by PDO.

Although PacifiCorp and ABB are aggressively moving towards Web-based applications for T&D operations and planning, they have just scratched the surface.

Most applications today are intranet but will move towards ASP and Web-services in the future. Most applications today are for operations but will move towards planning, equipment maintenance, equipment condition monitoring, power-quality monitoring, asset management, supply chain management and integrated enterprise management. Ubiquity of computing power is on the horizon.