Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, has announced Nova Scotia Power has completed the implementation of an Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS)-based Outage Management System (OMS) that will allow the utility to more accurately locate faults and quickly manage customer outage incidents resulting in improved restoration and reliability in its electric distribution network.
The utility’s new ADMS will allow them to better react to outages, and with Distribution Management System (DMS) applications, be more informed in regards to grid observation and outage predictions. “Our goal is to offer our 500,000 customers the best service possible and our integrated ADMS helps us achieve that,” said Paul Casey, Senior Director of Transmission and Distribution at Nova Scotia Power. “Our employees now have real-time information at their fingertips where available, allowing them to quickly react to and repair any faults in the network.”
A major advantage of utilizing an OMS capable of DMS analysis is the ability to assist with fault locations and isolations. With a traditional OMS, when a fault in the network occurs, a utility needs to manually create a plan to isolate the problem before implementing safe and electrically sound restoration plans based on the current state of the electric grid. Because Schneider Electric ™ OMS is able to model current network loads in real time and look ahead at forecasted network loading, the OMS is able to automatically create switch orders and integrate with its current standard protection requirements, reducing a significant amount of outage time and improving Estimated Time to Restore (ETR) information for utility customers.
“Schneider Electric OMS technology integrates with other enterprise utility systems to give utilities a true smart grid solution,” said Dragan Popovic, Executive Vice President, Smart Grid IT at Schneider Electric. “We’re pleased Nova Scotia Power chose our OMS to help operate a more reliable network for their residential, commercial and industrial customers.”
The Schneider Electric ADMS solution suite includes OMS, DMS, and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) tightly integrated with Schneider Electric Geographic Information System (GIS).
Nova Scotia Power’s new ADMS solution is implemented as a complete Information Technology/ Operations Technology convergence solution allowing the utility to provide more employees with access to real-time information. With the ADMS web-based crew management and outage reporting application and an ADMS mobile field client, Nova Scotia Power can dispatch crews to fault locations and give crews more timely information on current network conditions.
Schneider Electric ADMS is currently deployed in more than 26 countries serving more than 88 million utility customers.
