Within the power industry, utilities are facing the growing challenges of climate change and wildfires while adapting to increased policy and regulation. San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), a Sempra utility, is rising to meet these challenges, ensuring the safety of its customers and their community, with the development of a comprehensive Wildfire Mitigation Plan (WMP).
Wildfire Emergencies and Public Safety Communication
The WMP is designed to help prevent electric equipment-related fires and improve grid resiliency to withstand extreme weather conditions. The plan also includes innovative programs addressing the California mandate for utilities to actively provide wildfire emergency data and information to both internal and external stakeholders.
As part of their WMP, SDG&E has introduced a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) webpage informing customers and external stakeholders of PSPS events. The PSPS is built on top of the utility’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), a program started in December 2004 utilizing Esri’s ArcGIS Portal technology with internal systems supporting emergency operations communication. Making this effort possible required SDG&E to develop a solution that supplies near real-time network status reports in combination with affected customers.
The SDG&E electric network model is unique in that it is sectionalized. The utility can identify a sectionalizing device and cut power to all downstream devices from that point of origin. Using this technology enables the utility to easily shutoff power to predetermined sections of their grid. This means that SDG&E can mitigate wildfires by applying shutoffs to high risk areas when deemed necessary.
Although SDG&E had the ability to turn off power to a given section, they initially were not able to provide specific, real-time information that identifies impacted equipment, customers, and communities. SDG&E needed to develop a solution to allow the State of California and its emergency agencies to be kept informed during a PSPS event so that the State can take appropriate steps to ensure public safety.
To meet the State requirements, a solution was needed that quickly performs a trace downstream of an identified sectionalized device, and then presents the impacted areas, customers, and equipment geospatially within a web app.
Getting the Word Out Quickly – A Team Effort
UDC’s participation in this groundbreaking effort stemmed from our work with SDG&E to develop a solution to trace at-risk devices.
UDC team members worked with our client representative to convert the GIS electric network to a tabular distribution network (TDN). The result was to enable downstream and upstream trace within minutes. An internal webpage was developed that allows ad hoc tracing by Sempra team members at any time. Using these tracing capabilities, along with an FME (Feature Manipulation Engine) program built by UDC, the results were published internally within SDG&E’s ArcGIS Portal and externally to ArcGIS Online. Security is managed through active directory and ArcGIS Online secured groups and credentials.
During an actual PSPS event, real-time outage data read from NMS (Network Management System) published every three minutes, 24/7 using and FME process. As long as the internal computer network is available, the outage data generation service remains intact and runs independent of any server-side maintenance. This data currency is important for several reasons.
The SDG&E Meteorology department must be able to quickly (and at any time) identify areas of service territory that can be impacted by high wildfire weather conditions. This drives the plan that generates network sections to be de-energized that must be communicated to the State.
Based on seasonal and even daily factors such as drought, wind and lightning strike, electric network sections change and shift, requiring the most up-to-date data be available so that critical decisions that will impact public safety can be made accurately.
In addition, the network itself is constantly fluctuating due to maintenance and improvements, and team members rely on the latest information regarding at risk devices.
Continued Innovation
The TDN sectionalized trace solution became the foundation for establishing SDG&E’s internal and external WMP communications programs and identification of de-energized areas of the service territory. TDN report information is passed through the EOC internal communications program to engineering, network management and groups that need to understand shutoff fallout.
TDN supports the company’s Public Safety Power Shutoff, the external facing website that provides timely shutoff information. When a PSPS event is imminent, SDG&E can communicate the following to their customers:
- Potential Shutoff Areas
- Maintenance Plan (when/duration)
The TDN solution enabling PSPS functionality for SDG&E continues to evolve to meet new mandates from California Operational Areas (OAs) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). This summer, the utility will release a PSPS Viewer component that brings automation into play when generating PSPS events. SDG&E will have the ability to fully automate the management of the entire PSPS process including identifying the affected areas, providing real-time data of areas restored and resetting the application when the outage is complete. UDC continues to partner with SDG&E on their Wildfire Mitigation Plan innovations.