Communication of customer interruptions and device outages statistics near real-time

For many years, the electric utilities have been implementing trouble order or outage management systems to better organize and manage customer interruptions and device outages. One key aspect of these systems is the ability to geospatially display the current system outage restoration status for internal and external communications in a near-real time manner. It is this communication and use of the current interruption statistics that will be the focus of this presentation. The soon to be balloted IEEE trial use guide P1782 for reliability reporting practices, Sections 3 "Data Usage and Practice" provides examples of the internal and external stakeholder use of the reliability information. This presentation will focus on how Westar Energy uses near real-time outage information to communicate to the external groups including retail customers and community leaders for day-to-day and storm operations. Lastly, the presentation will present several examples of the publicly available outage information utilized by cast coast utilities for communication in the recent hurricane Irene restoration.