AMR SYSTEM
Seventy-five cents of every dollar you pay Southwest Tennessee Electric goes direct to TVA for energy costs. “There is little we can do to control TVA’s power costs,” says Jack Fox, STEMC President. “That makes it very important for us to look for opportunities to keep the costs associated with delivering power to your home as low as possible.”
STEMC’s automated meter reading, or AMR, system utilizes special meters and power-line carrier (PLC) technology to deliver daily meter readings back to each substation. From the substations, the data is transferred over a secure data connection to the utility’s main office in Brownsville.
STEMC currently uses a contract service, Heath Consultants, to read their meters. “The process of physically sending someone to read each of our 47,000 meters each month is very costly,” says STEMC Vice President of Operations & Engineering Al1an Glidewell. “The AMR system allows us to save those costs, as well as the energy losses associated with standard electromechanical meters.”
The AMR system will also allow STEMC personnel to locate weaknesses in the electric system. “The PLC signal is highly sensitive to loose connections along the lines,” says Glidewell. “This system is helping us find those problems and make repairs before they result in power outages.”
Dispatcher Kristin Lewis responds to an outage alarm. STEMC dispatchers are on duty 24 hours-a-day to coordinate the restoration of possible outages.
STEMC has dispatchers on duty 24 hours-a-day to manage the restoration of power in the event of an outage. When you call Southwest Tennessee Electric to report a power outage, we understand that you want to speak to a real person. Most of the time you can. However, during a major outage, this becomes very difficult. Southwest Tennessee Electric uses an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system to assist our dispatchers in times of high call volume. The IVR system is capable of answering 18 incoming calls at a time. The system uses caller-id to identify the customer and submit the outage to the outage management system. For the system to work effectively, it is important that STEMC have your correct home phone number.
GIS SYSTEM
STEMC is also in the process of building a geographic information system (GIS), or a geospatial database. When each new meter is installed, a GPS point is taken of that location. GPS information is also being gathered for each piece of equipment in the electric system. Once completed, this database will allow STEMC representatives to know exactly where the various elements of the electric system are located and how they interact. The GIS system will simplify the process of updating maps and result in a single, highly accurate map of the entire system. This model is then used to analyze the system, plan for growth, troubleshoot outages, and predict system performance in critical circumstances.
STEMC linemen hang fiber-optic cable. Over 200 miles of fiber will be used to carry data from STEMC substations back to the Brownsville office.
OUTAGE MANAGEMENT
One such use of this model is during an electric outage. The outage management system receives information from three sources. Dispatchers in the office may manually enter a customer’s address into the system who is reporting an outage. The IVR system will automatically enter outages into the system. Finally, the AMR systems reports outages to the outage management system, even if you are away from home.
The outage management system is a prediction engine that uses the model to predict the cause of an outage based on received reports. The result is a list of incidents, such as a substation offline or a fuse blown, rather than a list of members. This allows dispatchers to provide better information to our crews in the field resulting in shorter outages for our members.
Officials from Craighead Electric Cooperative Corporation visit with STEMC officials to learn more about our system before implementing a similar system at their own utility in Arkansas.
The equipment that STEMC is using has been tested in the field. “This equipment uses technology that has been in existance for years,” says Glidewell. “Though advanced, it has been proven reliable and effective in the real world.”
STEMC officials plan to have the system fully deployed by 2008. “Until then, you can expect to see on of our meter readers each month,” says Glidewell.
“We are excited about what this technology allows us to do,” says Fox. “It gives us the ability to improve system operation and the level of service to our customers.”
