Real-time power outage data updates
For nearly a recent year, every time a sudden power disruption happens, Mr. Dinh Van On’s family living in Dak Ring commune, Kon Plong district as well as other customers in Kon Tum province does not have to call the Customer Care Center to notify the situation and wait for the explanation of the power industry. The power industry has taken initiative in contacting, explaining the causes, proactively informing the expected time for electricity supply restoration. Such information is provided very quickly and clearly, relieving customers’ annoyance whenever power disruptions happen.
In order to be able to serve and take care of customers in real time, the research team of Customer Care Center of Central Power Corporation in cooperation with Kon Tum Power Company has found a solution: to synchronize the power outage data from SCADA Survalent System with the Customer Service CRM Software. Mr. Dang Quoc Vien – Head of the research team of Customer Care Center of Central Power Corporation, said that SCADA system is a very accurate and detailed real time data warehouse of every substation, state of switching, energized or not. This system has not been fully exploited for other functions such as advising, caring customers, as well as calculating the reliability of electricity supply.
Diagram describing the process of collecting SCADA Survalent data to integrate into the Customer Service CRM Software
However, when embarking on exploiting SCADA data from the Survalent system, the team encountered many difficulties due to information on the power supply status in the system being digitized and coded very complicatedly. The information displayed on the CRM system is in Vietnamese with clear content about customers, failure places, power grids, etc. Meanwhile, the information displayed on the Survalent SCADA system is sophisticated digits difficult to understand. Mr. Dang Quoc Vien and his colleagues spent half a year researching and deciphering. "
Thanks to the persistence and good use of SCADA knowledge, the research team has successfully decoded the digital information, and programmed a signal filter on the power supply status as required. The team has also programmed an Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS), converting signal variables from the Survalent SCADA data that have been decoded to the Customer Service CRM Software in a one-way mechanism. Then, the CRM analyzes and links codes of substations, from which to find out customer information and assess causes of power outages. Information about the actual power supply situation is lagged in just one second, helping telephone counselors as well as staff of the power industry actively and quickly handle the situation.
Many advantages
At present, the synchronization of power outage data from the Survalent SCADA System of the power grid in Kon Tum province with the customer care program is operating stably and effectively. Despite that it has just started from May 2017 to April 2018, this solution has brought about remarkable effects in the field of business and customer service such as:
- Quickly capturing failure information to promptly handle and enable customers to better understand and empathize with the power sector.
- Reducing the number of employees manually inputting data because power outage data is fully updated automatically.
- Serving effectively the oversight and quality management of power supply reliability by corporate leaders, accurately control SAIDI, SAIFI and MAIFI indicators;
This solution has been widely applied in the Central Power Corporation. As planned, five further power companies using Survalent SCADA systems will synchronize power outage data from SCADA into the Customer Service CRM Program.
In addition, the team will continue to study SCADA system signals of other companies such as ABB, ATS, etc., decode data, and continue to deploy the solution in all 13 power companies under EVNCPC. Based on the synchronized data, the team will develop additional features for customer care and technical management such as: signing up for temporary suspension of power supply through SCADA emulation system, calculating power supply reliability indicators, warning member units when their works affect many power supply reliability indicators, etc.