FortisBC Inc. (FortisBC) Application for a Certificate of Public ...

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Response:
FortisBC Inc. (FortisBC or the Company)
Application for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity
for the Advanced Metering Infrastructure Project
Response to British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC or the Commission)
Information Request (IR) No. 1
Submission Date:
October 5, 2012
Page 238
102.1 Please confirm the system control centre, or other group, will receive instant
notification from the advanced meters when the power goes off. Please confirm
the exact geographic location will be known for each advanced meter.
The operator will receive outage information via a separate software application shortly after the
event occurs (within a minute or two under normal operating conditions), subject to the filtering
described in the response to BCUC IR1 Q102.2. Meter location data is stored in the FortisBC
GIS system, so the operator will have the ability to display the exact geographic location for
advanced meters.
Response:
102.2 Since the outage information, by end use meter, will be known by the system
control centre as soon as the advanced meters are installed, why will field crew
response and repair times not be reduced until after a proposed Outage
Management System is deployed at additional cost?
Please also see the response to BCUC IR1 Q102.3.
Until FortisBC implements an outage management system the AMI outage information will be of
limited value at the onset of an outage on the system.
Without the OMS, the control room operator will be able to view individual outages graphically
on a screen. However, that data will have to be filtered to ensure that the operator is not
overwhelmed with short duration, isolated outage information or high volume information from
large outages better reported by SCADA. The necessary outage data filtering is likely to result
in a short delay before information is presented to the operator, which may in fact result in
FortisBC receiving customer calls first.
A key benefit achieved once AMI is implemented is the ability to view “nested” outages following
power restoration. The ability to view any customer outages post restoration can reduce or