Alstom’s Outage Management System (OMS) is now fully operational at Madison Gas and Electric (MGE), one of the nation’s most reliable utilities, providing electricity to over 145,000 customers in Wisconsin, USA. Alstom’s OMS will help the company to minimize outage durations and better inform their customers and internal management about outage status and restoration efforts. This system joins Alstom’s Energy Management System (EMS) and Distribution Management System (DMS) that have been in operation together at MGE since 2013. MGE represents Alstom’s first North American customer in production using a single platform to support integrated systems on a single workstation, enabling better holistic visibility of the entire grid, increased situational awareness - especially during outage scenarios - and the ability to integrate renewable energy resources.
MGE has used Alstom’s EMS, based on its e-terraplatform technology, since 1989. They took delivery of Alstom’s DMS based on its e-terradistribution technology in early 2013 and subsequently put Alstom’s OMS in production in February, 2015. With its new OMS now in operation, MGE anticipates faster fault location and accelerated restoration of power outages while also having better management of its distribution system including distributed generation, from solar photovoltaic panels to micro-cogeneration units, used in local energy projects.
“Having an integrated single user interface for use in our distribution control room not only provides us enhanced situational awareness, it’s also easier to use and train operators due to the consistency across applications. An integrated solution is just simpler and provides us an overall lower cost of ownership,” said Craig Fenrick, Vice President, Energy Delivery at Madison Gas and Electric.
Additionally, MGE can now transfer actual operating conditions and model data directly from their real-time environment to their planning environment. This ensures their planning model precisely represents their real-time, as-operated system making planning more efficient and accurate, enabling MGE to maintain its status as one of the nation’s most reliable utilities.
“Our team worked closely with Madison Gas and Electric on each phase of this project and continues to represent our strong, long-term relationship with MGE. This is another successful OMS implementation, following closely on the heels of our delivery to Southern Company’s Alabama Power proving the scalability of our e-terra control room software. These progressive utilities have allowed us to develop a mature product that is gaining a lot of momentum in the DMS/OMS market,” said Karim El Naggar, Vice President, Network Management Solutions, Alstom Grid.
