Alabama Power Leverages Existing Technology to Shorten Restoration Time, 2021 Chartwell Award Winner

In 2020, Alabama Power began looking at innovative ways to leverage its Automated Meter Infrastructure (AMI) and its Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) more effectively during major storms. During what turned out to be an active hurricane season, the AMI and ADMS teams created a script prompting each meter in a division to report to the AMI after crews finished their work for the day, revealing meters that were still without power before crews left an area. Between Hurricanes Sally and Zeta, the teams fully integrated the script so that when meters have no recent AMI data or do not respond to automated contact from the system, an outage ticket is created in the ADMS.  

Alabama Power’s system improvements, which won Chartwell’s 2021 Best Practices Gold Award in Outage Restoration, allowed the utility to verify that power had been restored for all customers in areas that had been severely damaged before releasing crews, ensuring that customers experienced shorter outage times. 

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Speakers:

–Justin Perry – Senior Engineer, Alabama Power

–Greg Edwards – Information System Analyst, Alabama Power

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