Wisconsin Public Service Improves Utility Restoration Using Outage Management System

The Challenge

Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) serves more than 450,000 utility customers and 333,000 natural gas customers in Wisconsin and Michigan. Because its service area experiences a variety of weather conditions, from severe thunderstorms to snow and ice, WPS dispatchers and field personnel must quickly answer and respond to calls, including outages caused by fallen trees or damaged power lines.

Previously, when an outage or issue was reported, WPS dispatchers had to wait until a lineman arrived on the scene and confirmed the trouble spot. Without a specific outage location, WPS control center operators could not work to reroute power around the damaged equipment, increasing the outage duration for customers. As part of its ongoing focus on providing world-class customer service, WPS sought to upgrade its outage management system (OMS) to provide faster, more accurate outage information to field crews, control center staff, and its customers.

 

---

The Solution

WPS selected Hexagon’s OMS with fault location with added mobile capabilities to enhance dispatch operations and provide more information to field crews.

Using mobile technology built into Hexagon's solution, dispatchers and field crews see the same single-screen view of all available details about an outage, including the number of customers affected, status of repairs, and a map showing the location of affected equipment. This central dashboard allows the utility to more rapidly and efficiently assign line workers, materials, and equipment for repairs, reducing outage restoration times.

For the dispatch control center, the upgraded technology and a streamlined user interface allows dispatchers and electric distribution controllers to work more efficiently with field personnel, which also reduces the length of outages.