Power System Engineering - Outage Management Systems

An Outage Management System (OMS) provides the capability to efficiently identify and resolve outages and to generate and report valuable historical information. It also helps the utility inform the customer of the outage situation and restoration status (rather than the customer informing the utility first). An OMS typically works in conjunction with a GIS, the utility’s CIS, and automated call handling systems, such as an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.

Today, with the increasing requirements on utilities to track and report outages accurately, OMS is a critical analysis tool. Functions that an OMS may support include accurate time stamping of outages and restoration by customer, crew tracking, predicting of outage causes, generating information of interest to customers, creating call-back lists, and reports for management and regulatory reasons.

Power System Engineering, Inc. (PSE) has experience helping utilities design, specify, and implement OMS. We know the vendors, the functional requirements, and the integration issues. In addition, PSE’s staff is active in addressing reliability reporting issues including helping utilities contribute to and respond to regulatory or legislative requirements in this area.

Services PSE can provide include:

Developing the business case for a new or enhanced OMS.
Pre-screening possible vendors.
Developing procurement specifications and a completing Request for Proposal (RFP) including terms and conditions.
Analyzing vendor responses and facilitating scoring exercises.
Seeking technical and business clarifications from vendors and overseeing contract development.
Support detailed design during system staging.
Providing project management assistance as necessary and when it is beneficial for successful project implementation.
Provide hands-on system configuration and integration services (e.g., databases and interfaces).
Supporting system functional and performance testing.
Providing training to utility staff to assure proper use of the outage system to achieve the intended results.