Location: Louisiana, United States
The client
DEMCO is a non-profit electric co-operative formed in 1938 and is based out of Louisiana, serving about half a million people in seven parishes. It is also the state’s largest electric co-op with 9,195 miles of line, 41 substations, and over 116,000+ meters.
The challenge
In 2021, DEMCO faced two extreme weather events. A major coast-to-coast winter storm, called Uri, caused extreme sleet and icy conditions, with widespread power outages due to ice accumulating on the transmission and distribution lines. More than 42,000 members of the co-operative were impacted by 499 separate outages and needed to have their power restored as quickly as possible. The unfamiliar conditions of snow and ice made travel a real challenge. It was critical that crews be routed as safely and efficiently as possible to the required location.
When Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana later that same year, it left in its wake half a million people without power, destroyed 13,000 homes, caused over $600 million of damage in Louisiana alone, and extensively damaged DEMCO’s grid. The devastation of Hurricane Ida toppled over 4,000 transmission and distribution poles across the area and nearly 90 percent of the co-operative’s members lost power. It was by far the most extensive damage to DEMCO’s grid in its history.
The co-op deployed more than 1,000 crew members, many from out of state, to restore power. It was during this hurricane that DEMCO’s existing outage management system (OMS) was overwhelmed by outage calls and data point failures. The system had to be shut down, leaving operators and customers without any updated knowledge of their outages. With the system failing, DEMCO essentially lost its “eyes.”
The solution
The valuable resources that were wasted on inefficient outage reporting and repair compelled DEMCO to explore reimplementing the Hitachi Energy Network Manager OMS during Hurricane Ida itself, an unprecedented action. For grid operators to successfully manage an extreme weather situation, it is crucial to have a unified view of their entire system – a view that is populated with real-time data.
DEMCO required a sophisticated situational awareness solution, which included a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) integrated with an OMS, implemented by Hitachi Energy, who had been a DEMCO partner since the 1990’s.
With this resilient Network Manager SCADA/OMS solution, DEMCO could prioritize outages, diagnose issues, and create a plan for resolution, all through a single web-based management interface.
The results
With the backup of its data points and constant visibility available through Hitachi Energy’s Network Manager OMS solution, DEMCO successfully got its systems up within hours mid-storm during Hurricane Ida, ensuring safe and reliable power to its members. Despite more severe on-ground conditions, restoration from the Hurricane Ida outage happened much more quickly than previous storms.
In any weather situation, DEMCO could collect and analyze real-time data, field incoming calls, and provide advance metering infrastructure (AMI) meter information, enabling them to allocate resources in the field and empower linesmen with all the applicable information to address issues in the safest and fastest ways possible.
Since the OMS is integrated with other critical business systems, such as a SCADA, dispatch, and notification, DEMCO gained insights to restore service during an outage and identify outages before they were reported. Being proactive delivered enhanced customer satisfaction.
DEMCO also restored power much quicker and more efficiently and was able to provide its customers with accurate and real-world status updates about specific outages and estimated restoration times.
Related links
Check T&D world article on DEMCO's Digital Transformation for Outage Management
Jan 2023
Ultimately, outage management is about trust. Operators must trust data coming in from the field is accurate and up to date. Line workers need to trust that operators are sending them to the right location and providing the right information at the right time, without sending them into unsafe conditions or on a wild goose chase. At the same time, the co-op’s members need to trust DEMCO is doing everything in its power to restore service as quickly as possible.