Social media in support of outage management practices

Social media is revolutionizing the way the world communicates. Utilities are now realizing the benefits of a powerful social media presence, especially in light of the large outages experienced during recent weather events such as Hurricane Sandy. Ongoing research at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) involves integrating customer-generated data from social media into existing restoration efforts and systems, and identifying and monetizing the benefits of utility efforts in social media. Initial findings, from a series of three regional workshops are included in this paper.