Logistics Management: A surprising way to improve your power grid disruption response efforts

Every utility manager knows that when power grid disruptions occur (which they inevitably will), restoration times are critical. Every minute the power is out makes your SAIDI metrics creep up, putting you at risk of fines, customer dissatisfaction, and a poor public image. No wonder utility managers, who are often the ringleaders of power grid disruption recovery efforts, are under constant pressure to speed up recovery times.

But how? Chances are, you’ve tried just about every method in the book for reducing power grid outage durations, and your leaders still want more.

But there may be one method you haven’t yet thought of.

Have you ever thought about scrutinizing your grid recovery logistics? The vast amount of back-office work associated with grid disruption recovery makes this a prime place for inefficiencies and bottlenecks to hide.

And an even better place to introduce grid recovery management software.

Let’s take a closer look.

SCENE: A hurricane has just hit and moved on. Now it’s time to clean up the mess.

Substations are flooded. Transformers have been blown off their poles. Falling trees have snapped power lines like rubber bands. And thousands of your customers are without power.

You send out your in-house repair crews, but the sheer scale of the damage quickly overwhelms them. The storm was worse than you were expecting. More resources are needed to get the power back on quickly.

And now the complex logistical operations begin.

This is where recovery efforts begin to get bogged down. Every external worker you hire must go through a contracting process to get them on your work rosters. That alone slows down the process of getting them out into the field to help with grid recovery efforts.

Then they have to be dispatched, managed, housed, fed, paid, and more.

Think about how long it could take just to set up, house, pay, and track expenses for all those contracted workers in your system. And that’s assuming you can accomplish all those tasks with one system – or do you handle different logistical tasks across several different applications?

All told, the logistics of power grid disruption recovery are a very common source of bottlenecks that slow down the recovery process.

There must be a better way.

And there is.

You can greatly speed up and streamline your power grid disruption recovery efforts by investing in an all-in-one grid disruption management solution. These handy grid software applications consolidate all the logistical operations required for power grid disruption recovery, from resource acquisition to processing invoices.

The key term is “all-in-one.” The right power grid disruption management solution should be able to handle and accommodate all the different recovery tasks that are most prone to creating bottlenecks. Here are some examples:

Resource activation and acquisition.
Summoning help needs to be streamlined, with records kept in an easily accessible place. The solution you choose must have capabilities for visualizing, activating and acquiring additional personnel as needed.

Workforce communication.
This goes without saying. The right power grid disruption management solution should support direct communication between users. It’s an invaluable capability for assigning tasks, asking, and answering questions, issuing emergency alerts, and more.

Time and expense tracking.
A good power grid disruption management solution must have built-in time and expense tracking capabilities. Imagine the backlog of spreadsheets, paper reports, and other documents you’d face if there was no single, central system for this type of data storage and processing. Having an application with built-in time and expense tracking greatly streamlines the process of post event reconciliations.

Lodging arrangements.
Identifying available hotel rooms and assigning them to external personnel can be a logistical nightmare without the proper infrastructure in place. You can simplify that process with an enabled power grid disruption management solution.

Location tracking.
After you dispatch your crews to their various jobs, it’s important to always keep track of their locations. Your power grid disruption management solution should have built-in GPS tracking for all app users. Then you can ensure your people are safe and focused on what they need to do.

Field access.
With all your crews hard at work out in the field, desktop-based solutions are simply not practical for handling grid recovery logistics. Look for a power grid disruption management solution that has (or in fact is) a smartphone-compatible mobile app that workers can access anywhere. The flexibility of work this accommodates is invaluable. Bonus points if the app is available for both iOS and Android, which ensures that all workers can access it via their personal or business smartphones.

Many of GE Vernova Grid Software’s utility customers leverage Storm Manager to guide the logistics of their power grid disruption recovery operations. This is an all-in-one, smartphone-enabled solution for handling the administrative and office-based work of grid disruption recovery, from resource acquisition all the way through to invoice processing.

We will take a deeper dive into Storm Manager in a future blog; in the meantime, feel free to ask our team for more information using the contact methods below.