Smart Meters for Outage Management

Reviewing the benefits and addressing the obstacles

BY RON CLANTON & MARK HOLLIDAY, KPMG LLP

The outage management process has undergone remarkable changes over the last several decades. The need to respond to power outages when they occur has been around since the first lines were run from utility to customer. The outage management system (OMS) applications of today are far different from systems used just a decade ago. Higher customer demand for reliability and quick resolution of outages continually presses utilities to enhance and refine their OMS applications.

So where did this start? Initially, prior to computer systems, calls from customers were received by the utility and were written by hand on “tickets”. Additional information provided by the customer also helped identify trouble spots, for example, the sound of a “big bang” would help to better identify where the outage was located. These tickets were manually sorted according to the circuit the customer was connected to and grouped for further action.