POWER improves outage-mapping technology

POWER Engineers, a global engineering consulting firm specializing in the delivery of integrated solutions in various industries, has achieved integration between Schneider Electric’s Responder system and a mapping-application suite devised by Rochester Public Utilities (RPU) in Minnesota, POWER said on Tuesday.

Schneider Electric’s product previously had been marketed to help reduce the duration of outages by locating them faster. By finding a way to integrate the Responder with RPU’s application, POWER has been able to create a real-time solution to crisis management in the power industry.

RPU needed to supply real-time data for its customers in the form of a web map displaying outage locations in its service area. The challenge was in balancing the requirement to maintain security with the need to let the public have access to a map view. A secondary, but very important goal was in the application’s being able to handle the kind of high-volume traffic expected in an outage situation, such as a storm or natural disaster.

POWER succeeded in combining the data flow between information stored in ArcFM Responder, live data sent to a server hosted by Amazon in the cloud, a web map hosted at ArcGIS Online, and the public application, in which the map could be viewed by the public.

RPU’s design also has enabled cost savings characteristic of cloud applications. The partnership was well-received. POWER consultant Rachelle McGillivray praised “solutions that provide real and immediate benefits," while Jay Forstner, a GIS coordinator at RPU, said POWER “met, or exceeded, all of our goals and well within our time constraints of the project.”