Arrowhead Electric Cooperative Lutsen, MN

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Arrowhead Electric Cooperative Lutsen, MN

• ESRI Mid-West Utility User Group March 30-31,
  2006
• Joe Buttweiler
• GIS Staking Coordinator

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Agenda

• About
• History of GIS
• Current GIS Uses
• Future GIS Plans

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About Arrowhead - Location
AECI Service territory includes Cook county as
well as small parts of Lake county
in Northeastern Minnesota
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About Arrowhead

• A truly rural cooperative
• 90 of Cook county is owned by Federal, State or
  Local governments
• Approximately 4050 consumers
• Of which
• 45 Residential
• 10 Commercial
• 45 Seasonal
• Full time residents of cook county own less than
  half of all privately owned land

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About Arrowhead

• Topography Climate
• Lots of Rock
• Peak Demand in Winter
• Air conditioners are rare except in commercial
  buildings.

The newly constructed summit chalet at Lutsen
Mountains is only accessible Via Gondola,
Snowmobile or Snowcat During the winter months.
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Before GIS

• Hand drawn paper maps
• Benefits
• Inexpensive to produce
• Drawbacks
• Difficult to update
• Only served as a paper map
• Considered, fairly useless by many
• GIS was considered but never implemented

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The GIS Initiation

• July 4, 1999
• Major Straight line wind storm
• 100 mph winds throughout the BWCAW parts of
  the Gunflint Trail corridor.
• Power poles broken throughout region.

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The GIS Initiation

• The re-building process involved line crews from
  many regional cooperatives.
• Paper map books could be used as a basic
  reference only.

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Using GIS

• GIS was built and underutilized
• Lack of basic technology training
• GIS value realized
• Lack of dedicated resources
• Time
• Knowledge
• Dependent upon vendor
• Vendor provided annual updates

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Revising the Strategy

• Allocate Resources
• Hire Employees
• Immediate GIS needs
• GIS Technology Plan Development
• Cooperative Goals Objectives

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Immediate Needs

• GIS Updates
• Basic Maps
• Map Books
• ArcReader Files
• PDF Map Books

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GIS Technology Planning

• Re-Create GIS Data
• Errors on Staking Sheets
• Old Datamodel
• GPS System Inventory
• Identified a need to update total plant value
• Provide base for spatially accurate data
• Using Trimble GeoXT w/ Beacon
• ADELINE Staking Software for Inventory Collection
• What are we collecting?
• Entire OH Distribution System
• Entire URD Distribution System
• Exception URD Cable only when known route.

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GIS Technology Planning

• GPS System Inventory
• Creating new personal Geodatabase from field
  data.
• Asset Identification with Random Numbers
• Poles
• URD Boxes
• Project Timeline
• 50-100 locations per day of work
• 2-3 Year project time frame for initial inventory

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GIS Integration

• Billing System
• Proprietary System
• Difficult to work with
• ODBC Driver allows direct data manipulation in MS
  Access, Excel etc.
• Lack of key field in billing system makes data
  querys and use extremely difficult and time
  consuming

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GIS Integration

• Outage Management
• Implementing an in-house system
• Input Outage Data
• Track Outage Progress
• Provide more timely information to members and
  member service representatives
• Links Directly to GIS for visual representations
• ArcGIS-ArcInfo
• ArcReader

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GIS Integration

• Outage Management-Work in Progress
• Call and Restoration Data Stored in GIS
• SAIFI
• SAIDI
• CAIDI
• Consumer Outage Hours
• Average Outage Per Consumer

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Outage Management
Customer Service Representative Enters Phone or
Account Number. Name, Service Location
etcpopulated automatically Operations personnel
can update records to provide more information to
customer service representatives and members
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Outage Management
Records entered in Outage Database automatically
appear In GIS via linked tables and Relationship
classes. Manual change in GIS required to clear
outage from map
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Rights of Ways

• Rights of Ways
• 7 Year Aggressive clearing schedule
• Track Progress
• Annotate field issues to increase member
  satisfaction

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Staking/New Services

• In office
• Provide member with more information
• Distance Estimates
• More accurate cost estimates

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Staking/New Services

• ADELINE Benefits
• No need for compass, string
• No need to re-write/enter data
• Data Verification
• Seamless integration with GIS data

• Inventory Summary
• Retirement Summary
• Eventually develop job costs
• (Labor, Material, Misc)

GIS
Field Device
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Automated Staking
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Automated Staking
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Easements

• Trimble GPS
• ArcPad v.6
• V.7 in 2006
• ArcMap measures distance and bearing
• Add text to map
• Increased field efficiency 2-3x
• Office efficiency increases

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GIS Uses

• AMR (Hunt-Turtle System)
• Working to display outages in GIS automatically
• Meters related to AMR history table
• Will integrate into OMS eventually

• Power Flow Modeling
• Geometric Network
• Display flow direction
• Model device status changes
• Outage counts

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Other Uses

• Line patrol tracking
• Meter testing zone creation and tracking
• Transmission line patrol assistance during outage
  tracking
• Storm recovery tracking
• Track bear damaged poles
• Joint use attachment tracking
• Work plan drawing areas on website

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Planning

• Visually display growth of new services
• ArcReader documents
• Sectionalizing Diagram
• Contingency Study
• Circuit Diagrams (Existing Proposed)

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SCADA GIS

• AECI investigating SCADA
• Complete, Shared, Partial, Device Integration
• Communication Infrastructure
• GREs 700 MHz Radio
• Wild Blue Satellite Internet
• Current VHF Radio
• Leased Telephone Lines (Dial-up, Frame Relay)
• Poor Cell Phone Coverage

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SCADA GIS

• SCADA ties to GIS
• Visualize potential power theft locations
• Needs billing integration
• Can be accomplished at various levels
• Accuracy dependent on load patterns
• Receive immediate outage event information
• Display device status (Substation and Feeder)
• Load Management/SCADA GIS
• Display automatic voltage reductions
• Residential load management
• Emergency load sheds

Source http//www.gisdevelopment.net/application
/utility/power/utilityp0015pf.htm
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Mobile Workforce Management

• Planned Implementation in 2006
• Beginning Steps
• ArcReader
• Geodatabase to contain Billing Data, Distribution
  System, Landbase
• Work Order/Service Order Updates
• Send/Receive work orders
• GIS
• Poll billing system for updates each night
• Wireless communications from Headquarters only

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Mobile Workforce Management

• Future Additions
• AVL
• Communications Changes
• Dependent upon SCADA plans
• Coverage from anywhere is potential with a 700MHz
  radio (line of sight considerations)
• Substation or Other Hot Spots via Wild Blue

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Summary

• Allocated Resources
• Devised Plan
• GPS System Inventory (Base for future)
• Current/Interim Uses
• Even basic uses provide quantifiable time and
  cost savings for other coop. employees.
• Future Projects
• SCADA Integration
• Mobile Workforce Management (MWM)
• Communications Medium
• Other..?

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Questions?

• Joe Buttweiler
• Arrowhead Electric Cooperative
• [phone]
• jbuttweiler_at_aecimn.com