2020 Oracle Utilities NMS User Group – Austin, TX

NMS Planned Outage Letter (POL) Process

© 2015 San Diego Gas & Electric Company. All copyright and trademark rights reserved.

Agenda

➢ Introductions

➢ SDG&E Stats

➢ ROSE Project Overview

➢ POL Cutover & Implementation Strategy

➢ NMS integration with Letter System

➢ NMS Changes for POL process

➢ What We Did Well

➢ Benefits

➢ Challenges

➢ Questions

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SDG&E Stats

SDG&E (parent company, Sempra Energy) is a California regulated public utility that provides energy service to 3.6 million people through 1.46 million electric meters and 892k natural gas meters, in San Diego and southern Orange counties.

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➢ Service area spans 4,100 square miles across two counties and 25 communities

➢ 170,000 service transformers

➢ 1,053 circuits: 12kv (834) & 4kv (219)

➢ 136 distribution substations (85% on SCADA)

➢ 560+ NMS users

➢ Awards:

➢ 14th consecutive year “Regional Reliability Award” for the Western Region

➢ 2020 Sempra Energy named one of the World’s Most Admired Companies by Fortune Magazine

➢ 2019 PA Consulting Community Safety award for the fire mitigation program

➢ 2018 ReliabilityOne™ “National Reliability Award” for superior performance among utilities in America

ROSE Project Overview

The Reliability and Operational Safety Enhancements (ROSE) Phase 1 project started in June 2019

➢ Goal = Decommission FocalPoint reporting system (end of 2Q2020)

➢ Move all FocalPoint reports and views to Oracle Utilities Analytics (OUA) – 80% complete

➢ Upgrade NMS to Service Pack 2 (2.3) – completed November 17, 2019

➢ Move the Planned Outage Letter (“POL”) process from FocalPoint to NMS – completed November 17, 2019

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POL Cutover & Implementation Strategy

Thu-Nov 14th

•Day-ahead client reminder

Fri-Nov 15th AM

•Stopped sending letter files from FocalPoint

Sun-Nov 17th

PM

• Implemented NMS 2.3 with POL changes

Mon-Nov 18th

•Provided onsite support

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➢Pre-cutover activities

➢ Thursday-Nov 14th

➢ Sent day-ahead reminder to Planned Outage Coordinators (POC)

➢ Requested POCs to stop sending letter files from FocalPoint at noon

➢ Friday-Nov 15th

➢ Disabled FocalPoint “mail icon” to stop the letter process

➢ Loaded historical data to a temp table

Cutover & Implementation Strategy

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➢Cutover activities:

➢ Sunday-Nov 17th 10 PM – 1 AM

➢ Implemented NMS 2.3 with the new POL functionality

➢ Migrated all existing FocalPoint Letter ID data history to NMS (appended “- SYS” to audit log entry to distinguish migrated data vs. created in NMS)

➢ Tested the POL process with a dummy letter file in Prod prior to turning over to clients

➢ Removed ‘send letter’ permissions from FocalPoint users

➢ Notified users that implementation was completed

➢ Monday, Nov 18th

➢ Provided onsite support for the new NMS POL process

NMS integration with Letter System

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢When a switch plan is in Prepared status, a Planned Outage Coordinator (POC) will locate the plan in the Switch Plans List using default filtering

➢ Added a new default “POC” switch plan filter for POC role:

➢ Type = Planned

➢ Status = Prepared orScheduled

➢ Customers Interrupted = Y

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢ Added new columns to the Switching Plans List:➢ Letter ID

➢ Est. Outage Finish Date

➢ Dur (Hrs:Min)

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢ POC role opens the switch plan and selects the Customers Impacted tab

➢ Added New Letter ID display field – POC verifies Letter ID field is blank:

➢ Added a new “!” icon to show only Assigned Account customers (crit type = A)

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢POC sends the planned outage letter (POL) list of impacted transformers from the Customers Impacted tab

➢ Added “Send POL” button (available to POC role only)

➢ Letter ID is auto-populated (switch plan ID + unique letter starting with A)

➢ “Send POL” button is disabled

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢ Added new “letter generated” and “letter voided” entries to the Tracking/Audit log, including:

➢ Letter ID

➢ Planned outage start and end times

➢ # customers impacted

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢ On the Switch Plans List, verify the Letter ID column is populated

➢ User must refresh list to see update

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢ NMS creates a .csv file including:

➢ District➢ Letter ID

➢ Circuit

➢ List of impacted transformers

➢ Issue Date/Time

➢ Planned Outage Date/Time and Duration

➢ Processed Flag

➢ Last Updated Date/Time

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢ The .csv file is stored in an NMS directory ➢ A cron job runs every minute looking for new files. If found, it picks up

the file and sends to EDIX. EDIX updates the letter system (iAvenue/Saratoga CRM)

➢ Email alerts are generated if any errors occurred in the process

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢Planned outage is rescheduled

➢ Operator rejects the plan: NMS clears the Letter ID and writes the voided letter activity to Tracking/Audit log

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NMS Changes for POL process

➢ Plan dates and details are updated on the Request tab and transitioned to Prepared state

➢ POC clicks the “Send POL” button: a new unique Letter ID is generated, the trailing letter is incremented by one (e.g., from A to B)

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What We Did Well

➢ Well-defined cutover and implementation strategy

➢ Close collaboration between Business, IT, and Oracle Services

➢ The existing planned outage letter process was well documented

➢ Helped define requirements and design

➢ Provided the basis for the new training procedures

➢ Engaged business users early on to validate the draft requirements and design, and involved them throughout the process

➢ Combined user training with UAT, which included SME train-the-trainer training

➢ SMEs trained their peers

➢ Provided sufficient time between UAT and implementation to address/fix any issues found during UAT

➢ Sent multiple communication updates close to go-live

➢ Onsite support was well received

➢ Minimal issues post-implementation

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Benefits

➢ Provided a more user-friendly planned outage letter process in the same system the POCs use for sending OBD/customer calls

➢ Letter ID’s, customer lists, updates are real time➢ One client remarked, “Why didn’t we do this before?!”➢ Received very few help desk calls after go-live➢ New process was very well received

➢ Eliminated the need to ScheduleReject a switch plan in NMS to trigger a customer list update in FocalPoint

➢ Eliminated a 4-hour backup and reload of FocalPoint data during certain NMS upgrades (since letter data was not stored in NMS)

➢ Planned outage letter activity now stored in NMS for easier tracking and reporting

➢ Programmers/Operators can now see when and who generated the letters which were previously only available in FocalPoint

➢ One step closer to decommissioning FocalPoint

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Challenges

➢ Migrating historical letter activity from FocalPoint to NMS

➢ Defining the Tracking/Audit log Details for the letter activity

➢ Adding error handling at every potential point of failure

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Questions

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