What’s In Your Disaster Recovery Wallet?

It never seems to fail that if you wait long enough the unthinkable will happen and prove what you were trying to say all along.  The article “AMI Extends Alabama Power’s Outage System Effectiveness in Historic Storm“ drove home the message I have been voicing for some time.  I adapted the tagline from a popular charge card commercial, which fits this situation nicely, and used it for the title of this blog.  Derl Rhoades’ explanation on how their AMI system extended the effectiveness of the Alabama Power Outage System highlights the importance of the following question for every utility:  What’s In Your Disaster Recovery Wallet? 

As a disclaimer, I need to let you know that in various roles over the years I have worked with many different Southern Company teams.  I wanted to point this out and commend them on their active pursuit of understanding as to what the Smart Grid should be.  They are a recognized leader in the industry and for years have pushed the envelope in applying technology to their utility operation processes.

You only have to compare the public’s response to Southern Company’s restoration efforts after the tornados to the public’s response to the utilities on the east coast after last year’s hurricane to get a clear picture of the importance of a “disaster recovery wallet”.  Granted, a hurricane usually causes a wider area of destruction than a tornado, but the tornados that hit Southern Company were unprecedented in numbers and size.  I believe the greatest factors in the public’s response toward their utilities in these two events had to do with how well the utilities either handled or did not handle the unexpected.  Southern Company had the advantage of having its AMI systems almost fully deployed and working in Alabama and Georgia.  Since they were ahead on the AMI curve and had been working hard on it for several years, they were able to take advantage of the AMI benefits that they had integrated into their processes.  A key point I want to note here – they have worked hard for several years to integrate the AMI technologies into their legacy processes.  This helped them to be better prepared and afforded them greater flexibility in handling the unexpected.  Responding as they did proved to the public that the AMI technology could deliver on its promises.  Granted, it was only one of the pieces to the puzzle, but it was a critical piece that opened up a view into the unknown and made quick assessment of the situations possible.

Oh, Oh, Wait A Moment…

I started this blog to compliment Southern Company on its success story, but as I said earlier, all you need to do is wait a moment and something else will come along to highlight what you have been saying for years.  Even before I could finish giving my kudos to SoCo, this article from Illinois hit the wire: “State investigation – ComEd should pay for outages“.  It highlights the next shoe to drop for utilities, and I hope all are paying attention.  Note the opening paragraph in the article:

“Prolonged outages that at one point left more than 800,000 people in Northern Illinois without power during last summer’s storms were not unpreventable acts of God, but were caused by years of neglect of equipment and lack of tree-trimming by ComEd, according to a report from the Illinois Attorney General’s office.”

This should strike fear into the hearts of every utility executive because it reveals an escalation in the dissatisfaction the public has with utilities.  The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC), the PUC body for the state, is now on the hook to agree or disagree with the Attorney General’s office findings.  Illinois has been in a battle with ComEd about who should fund its AMI deployment.  Another interesting thing about Illinois is that their state legislature passed a law, by-passing the governor’s veto, on behalf of ComEd to support its AMI deployment.  The law placed a timeline and unprecedented, tight performance restrictions on that AMI project.  With the filing of this new report with the ICC, it will be interesting to see if these performance restrictions are not tightened even more.  This has been a very public battle between ComEd and the governor’s office, so the stakes are high.

Many utilities (IOU’s, COOP’s, and Municipalities) may wonder why this should be important to them.  Well, if you have been out of touch for the past couple of years, you may have missed the California, Maine, and other growing smart grid pushback movements across the country.  I have said for years that utilities are in this together whether they like it or not, and all utilities that do not have the public’s confidence are the same in the public’s mind no matter where they are located.  News travels fast, and today it moves at internet speed.  The Illinois situation is being closely monitored along with the smart meter pushback with the city of Naperville’s municipality.  The promise that AMI will improve outage performance should be voiced carefully; utilities will be held to those words.  So my suggestion is to speak them carefully and, most of all, know what your chosen technology can and cannot deliver.

Those of us who have worked with and touched many different systems know that not all AMI systems are equal.  Some may not be as effective as others under stressful situations such as those faced by the Southern Company operating units last year.  Yet, this type of benefit is usually the first, if not the major, selling point that utilities use to win support for deployment of an AMI system.  Utilities that do not do their homework to understand their own processes, including how the technology will impact those processes, could be setting themselves up for serious failure.

I recently saw statistics that said about 67% of the utilities who have said that they are going to deploy smart grid technologies have not moved forward; many are still stuck at start.  That may be a good thing or a bad thing.  It is good news if the utility is working HARD to understand how to implement the technology into its legacy processes as Southern Company has done.  It is bad news if the utility is still at the same old “analysis by paralysis” phase, because there is a real danger that events outside of their control will overwhelm the their ability to deliver, and the public will be looking for heads to chop.

Many utilities still need to do their research and then think long and hard before deploying AMI systems.  You really need to know, What’s In Your Disaster Recovery Wallet!