Project Highlights
- 42,141 miles of natural gas distribution
- 6,438 miles of transmission
- 4.6 million meters
- 3.5 million services
The Accurate Reconciliation of Meters and Services project (ARMS) establishes a relationship between gas services in GIS to customer meter records in Customer Care & Billing (CC&B). This allows ad-hoc requests for a myriad of use cases, which includes the ability to easily find meter information needed to establish contact with a customer or perform inspections.
ARMS Project Background and Goals
The challenge for PG&E that sparked ARMS was not being able to accurately represent gas meter locations within their GIS to manage services more effectively. Without complete mapping and visualization, it was difficult to determine which or how many customers might be impacted by planned maintenance or in the case of an emergency event. The company needed a way to visualize meter data in relation to asset information and wanted to establish a process for maintaining and linking records over time. The goal of the project was to increase accuracy of PG&E’s locational information and to increase the accuracy of the data within the meters and the assets.
Solution and Approach
ARMS was initiated within PG&E’s DIMP Risk Assessment group who performed preliminary manual review of meter data samples and developed a script to join GIS and CC&B data sets to review critical customers and risk activities. That script was then used to develop a categorization model to categorize accuracy of known meter matches and identify a more manageable subset that would need to be manually matched.
Using the scripts, the ARMS team matched each CC&B meter record to a gas service location in ArcGIS. The datasets were then categorized into High, Medium, Low Confidence, or No Match. Each category is comprised of sub-categories which correspond to specific criteria used to attempt a match. Each sub-category was tested using a sampling method allowing for re-categorization.
For ARMS, UDC provided Data Acceptance Testing and Audit of the work performed by a sub-contractor. UDC also completed meter data refreshes, incorporated deltas pertaining to meters, and performed actions on data requests submitted to the ARMS team by other departments within PG&E.
Project Benefits for PG&E
Using a combination of automation and well-developed methodology, ARMS was able to effectively evaluate 4.6+ million meters and 3.5+million services in a relatively short timeline with the last manual matches being verified in August of 2021. The match rate of the initial script established 67% of the matches as high confidence and, by the end of the project, the match rate increased to 97%.
During ARMS, PG&E encountered multiple opportunities to improve upon internal datasets. In one example, the team improved elevation data for meter data to make billing operations more accurate for the customers. The team also leveraged enhancements to improve where curb valve maintenance needed to be performed; when the utility can derive the number of meters connected to a specific service, they are able to reduce truck rolls making them more cost effective and efficient. The locational improvement of the meter data was leveraged by the Electric Operations to make more effective Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) maps.
Above all, the project has enhanced ability for PG&E to respond to customer requests and reach out to customers that are affected by an outage or event.
“The ARMS Project (CC&B and GIS information) integration will enable a whole new level of understanding and analytics that weren’t possible or easy to achieve. Additionally, it will enhance emergency response, gas outages, and improve our understanding of overall usage and loading. This next level of understanding is exactly what PG&E needs to become a safer, better utility.”
Jesse Jennings, PG&E
Learn more about ARMS by viewing our PG&E / UDC Esri conference presentation, Enhanced Gas Safety and Customer Service – Accurate Reconciliation of Meters and Services at PG&E.