Optimising customer information and the fault management process

The potential for improved customer information was first identified following discussions between EATechnology and NEDL. These discussions addressed the strategic issues of fault management, linking the costs of network investments and fault response to quantified improvements in the regulatory indicators, such as customer minutes lost. Whilst mainly strategic, the original discussions also introduced the concept of a tactical model that could be used every day to improve the estimates of when all current faults would be restored. Subsequent discussions with NEDL focused the need on these tactical issues. In particular it is required to address the management of information and resources under emergency conditions, with the aim of making significant improvements in the quality of information supplied to the customers and to the media. It is well known that in emergencies it is extremely difficult for the incident managers to make accurate forecasts of when the customer supplies will be restored. However, following storms in the UK the regulator concluded that there is a need to enhance forecasts and there is a recognised need for improvements in this area. The new eaSTORM system outlined in this paper has been designed to meet this requirement. It provides a systematic way of estimating the time to restore customer supplies with significant improvements in accuracy