DELIVERING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM DATA TO ALL LEVELS OF USERS CAN BE A CHALLENGE FOR ANY UTILITY. Not only is the data diverse, but the users' skill sets are even more so. The 8800 employees of Georgia Power Co. (GPC; Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.), the largest of five electric utilities in Southern Company, serves more than 2.1 million customers in 153 of Georgia's 159 counties. Employees in engineering, customer service, marketing, information technologies, forestry, operations and lighting need quick and easy access to certain information on entities in the distribution system, on customers and on abnormal conditions in the network. GPC rose to this challenge by implementing an application that gives this wide variety of users access to distribution facilities data, GIS data, and relevant customer, transmission, substation, outage management and other data.

THE DISTVIEW SOLUTION

GPC wanted a web-based solution because most employees are experienced in using the Internet. Therefore, the new application would be a simple point-and-click tool that would require little to no end-user training, even for the most technically challenged employee. The company chose Gatekeeper Systems (Pasadena, California, U.S.) as its software vendor. Gatekeeper uses the application framework NaviGate to build web-based viewers and data distribution tools. The project was planned in phases, not only to get an early return on investment, but also to get feedback from employees that could affect later planned phases. The Phase 1 implementation of GPC's Distribution Viewer (DistView) was completed in March 2001 after just three months of development. By early 2005, Phase 5 was completed.

Today, when engineers and operators at GPC need maps or reports about their electrical distribution network, they turn to DistView (Fig. 1), which provides a map-based window into a spatial data warehouse that contains information on every object in the distribution system, every customer and every abnormal condition. In addition to engineers and operators, the DistView system also enjoys broad usage by several different user communities at GPC (Table 1). The DistView has become widely used (Table 2) and critical to GPC's operations. Users, who previously spent hours searching various applications for individual pieces of data, now have all the data available to them in one place. This saves time, reduces employee stress levels and, ultimately, makes them more efficient.

Figure 2 shows the basic layout of the DistView user interface. Users can request information on customers, equipment, substations, circuits/feeders and maps/drawings with results provided in graphical form or as printed reports. To service these requests, DistView may automatically link to other files or systems. Figures 3-8 illustrate some of the results from typical user requests.

HOW IT WORKS

The data accessible in DistView is extracted on a weekly basis from 103,000 base maps and stored in an Oracle Locator spatial data warehouse along with data from many other data sources. These other sources include the Georgia Department of Transportation, summarized customer data from the Southern Company's customer information system (CIS), topographic imagery from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and GPC's transmission system data. The DistView system also stores many kinds of summaries and cross-references in the data warehouse, adding value to the data extracted from the other systems.

DistView consists of Autodesk MapGuide software with the addition of several modules from Gatekeeper Systems. The DistView system uses the core system for map viewing and reports, a print module for high-quality engineering printing, a document manager for organizing and managing 37,000 detailed schematic drawings and an Operations Visualization System for real-time display of data from GPC's trouble-call management system (TCMS), which the company uses for outage management.

A WINDOW INTO OUTAGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

GPC operates a pair of sophisticated outage management systems (OMS), one for the metropolitan Atlanta area and one for the rest of the company's service territory. These systems maintain detailed databases of real-time electrical system status, including the status of every active device (switches, breakers and reclosers). The systems also continuously track customer outages, using data from trouble-call reports and field crews to monitor exactly which customers have been affected by a network failure or repair operation. In addition, the systems maintain a database of detailed notes about devices, for example, recording which switches cannot be operated because of equipment failure or local conditions.

The OMS is a critical tool electrical system operators' use, especially during storm conditions, to safely operate the network. However, the OMS requires special training, and because system performance is critical, especially during large outages, the number of users on the system is tightly controlled.

The data in the OMS are also of critical importance to many other users in the organization, both during outages and normal operations. DistView uses a bridge to the OMS's databases to retrieve this valuable data from the OMS and make the information available to hundreds of DistView users. Instead of using the special-purpose OMS to see this data, users employ the familiar DistView tool to view customer calls, related outage information, abnormal-status devices and notes from field crews (Fig. 9). In addition, DistView aggregates this data from the two separate OMS and displays the information in a single, easy-to-use summary format. The Area Browser provides for hierarchical searching and “rolled up” summary reports of operational data throughout the system (Fig. 10).

HIGH-QUALITY PRINTING

Georgia Power's mapping data are maintained in more than 103,000 CAD drawings. This approach has worked well for the company, allowing it to cost-effectively maintain extremely detailed drawings. However, prior to DistView, if an engineer or operator wanted a hardcopy drawing to study the distribution network, he or she would have to piece together several maps and print the drawing. It was difficult to print a useful map from a dozen CAD files, and there was no way to incorporate other data such as GIS, USGS maps or data from the OMS.

DistView provides a powerful printing tool to address this critical need. Using this tool, DistView users can choose any geographic area, at any scale, and print it to any hardcopy device. Users routinely print from devices ranging from laser printers and desktop inkjet printers to E-size (24-inch by 36-inch [610-mm by 914-mm]) engineering plotters. DistView also allows users to customize their printed map view, selecting the layers and annotation appropriate for their specific usage. Since the system has been installed, DistView users have created more than 15,000 hard-copy maps using the system, saving GPC engineers countless hours and immeasurable frustration.

ENTERPRISE SPATIAL DATABASE YIELDS OTHER BENEFITS

The DistView database is always complete and up-to-date with the most accurate mapping information. Because it is an Oracle Locator database of all the company facilities, plus a large amount of land-base information (streets and political boundaries), the DistView database is extremely valuable to GPC for applications outside of DistView.

For example, each year, GPC is required to compute the number of poles and the total length of wires in each of hundreds of tax districts in the company's service area. The company pays taxes based on this data, so it is important to get the data right. In the past, performing this calculation was a multi-month process that involved running AutoLISP scripts in each of the 103,000 CAD maps that make up the company's facility base maps. A variation of the process was to extract all of the data from the 103,000 maps and then do the calculations externally in a GIS system. This process was also lengthy, complex and resource-intensive as far as computer resources and staff time.

Since all of the facility data and tax boundaries (basically city and county boundaries) are stored in the Oracle Locator-based DistView database, this process was greatly simplified starting with the 2003 year-end. The tax computation process was changed to use the Locator database. Instead of processing 103,000 map files, the calculations were performed against a seamless extract built from the Oracle Locator database. The result was a savings of hundreds of man-hours and weeks of elapsed time.

For the 2005 year-end, the computation was even further simplified. The count, measurement and assignment of facilities to tax districts was computed using a few lines of standard structured query language (SQL), using Oracle Locator's spatial functions. The tax reports now can be calculated in only a few hours.

FIELD MAPPING

GPC maintains a variety of special-purpose maps and drawings, in addition to the facility base maps. These drawings include schematic drawings of underground facilities, drawings of lighting projects and other types of documents. These documents can be viewed in DistView. Users can locate them by viewing the extent of the document on the DistView map or by searching for information from the document, such as a project name or switch number.

GPC uses the Document Manager Module (DMM), which maintains a cache of documents on the user's laptop, to allow operators and engineers to take these drawings into the field. Documents in the DMM are organized by mapping district, which lets users choose a district and quickly download all the documents for that district. More than 100 users routinely take these documents into the field on a daily basis.

FUTURE PHASES TO ADD FURTHER CAPABILITIES

In the future, GPC plans to implement additional features, which may include:

• Application of a Joint Use module to maintain data about other utilities that attach to GPC's utility poles.

• The Distribution Control Centers (DCCs) are responsible for operating the electrical distribution system, and they manage all of the switching and maintenance activity on the network. The DCCs make heavy use of DistView during both normal and storm conditions. In a planned upgrade to DistView, DCC operators will get their own special DistView site tuned specifically to their needs, with custom searching and reporting capabilities, special capabilities for viewing on multiscreen displays and a separate system for improved reliability.

• GPC's distribution engineers are responsible for maintaining detailed information about the capacity of the electrical network. Future enhancements to DistView will allow engineers to maintain and view device capacity and demand directly in DistView, greatly improving record keeping, convenience and accuracy.

The user community has continued to ask for more from this tool, which has resulted in additional functionality being implemented on an ongoing basis. Our Web-Based Spatial Data Warehouse, as we like to call it, will continue to grow as our users show us additional ways in which the application can help them be more efficient. Because of the broad success of DistView, GPC managers say this system will remain the company's platform for deploying new distribution system applications.

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Mary H. Adams is a 26-year veteran of Georgia Power Co. As a GIS project lead, she is currently responsible for researching and implementing a new distribution GIS system and for coordinating all GIS systems and applications such as web and mobile. She holds a bachelor's degree in business management, belongs to GITA and serves as a member-at-large on the Southeastern GITA board. mhadams@southernco.com

Table 1. Users and uses for Distribution Viewer.

User Community for Disribution View
User Community	Typical Uses
Engineers	View facilities data
	Link from transformer to customer information system to obtain customer load and usage data
	Verify that customers are connected to proper transformer to assure proper load distribution and in support of automated outage analysis
	Examine circuits for basic load analysis
	Locate affected customers when line work may interrupt service
	Access underground one-line schematic diagrams
	View outage management system data
	View current abnormal device configuration when planning new work
Forestry Department	Calculate line miles to be trimmed
	Print paper maps for vegetation management crews to identify potentially affected customers to contact when work may affect customer service
Control Center	View detailed facilities data during trouble restoration
	Use customer search data to identify customer connectivity during outages
	Use equipment search to find detailed equipment data during outage restoration
Lighting Department	Print maps of customer lights to give to customers
	In response to customer inquiries, find customers from customer information system and locate customers' facilities on map
Marketing Department	Find distribution equipment serving priority customers, critical customers, key accounts and other special-needs customers
	Verify accurate customer-to-transformer links

Table 2. Distribution Viewer statistics.

Distribution Viewer by the Numbers
Usage Statistics	Number of Users	1200+
	Average daily logins	262
	Average daily distinct users	141
	Peak daily users	257
	Average daily map views	8368
	Average map view response time (server)	0.934 sec
	Peak daily map views	15,038
	Peak daily report views	1572
	Monthly average number of hard-copy maps printed	1538
	Number of mobile users of document manager module	100+
Facility and Mapping Statistics	Number of input basemaps processed	103,696
	Number of one-line schematic drawings processed	27,703
	Number of transformers	566,597
	Number of poles	1,692,676
	Number of circuit segments	5,671,042
	Length of circuits	117,846 miles (189,655 km)
	Number of primary circuits	2357
	Number of substations (including customer substations)	2281
Database Statistics	Total number of database objects	28,139,355
	Database Size	12.45 GB