IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020 - 60

Integrated Approach for Fault
and Outage Management

If there are more complaints within a particular network,
the ADMS will treat them as a potentially connected outage using its outage prediction functionality to determine
the location of affected protective devices based upon the
calls and its network topology. This means the ADMS can
predict a particular breaker that could be tripped, based
on predefined prediction logic. So, even after very few
complaints, the prediction will occur, the entire network
downstream of the breaker will be in a predicted state,
and the consumers connected to that part of the network
will be also be in a predicted state. All consumers under
a prediction state will get informed through an SMS, the
web portal, and/or the mobile app. At the same time, the
predicted outage will be updated in FFA, and a field crew
will be dispatched to confirm the predicted device. Subsequently, the field crew will isolate the fault, restore the
consumers, and attend to the fault as per standard procedure (see Figure 5).

There are three ways of getting outage information into
the ADMS:
1) telemetry (automated) devices
2) consumer complaints
3) advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) last-gasp capability (which would be available after integration of
the MDMS).
Through Telemetry Devices

If any automated breaker trips, the status of the device is
updated in the ADMS; the network downstream to the
breaker is deenergized, and consumers in that area are notified of the outage. Outage information is updated in the
CRM so that consumers are informed through SMS, the
web portal, and/or the mobile app. At the same time, outage
information is updated in FFA, so the field crew is informed
of the outage. The field crew will isolate the fault, reroute
power to the consumer, and attend to the fault as per standard procedures, as seen in Figure 4.
The ADMS is also equipped with an automatic power
restoration system, which reduces the scope of the outage by
isolating the faulty section and restoring the healthy section
if any automated device(s) persists downstream in the network. The same application can also provide a switching step
to restore the outage in a more efficient and effective way.

Through Advanced Metering
Infrastructure Last Gasp

All smart meters have a last-gasp capability. This enables
high priority information like power status to be transmitted by meters when the power supply is out, making outage
notification extremely fast and not dependent on consumer
complaints. After integrating the ADMS and MDMS, notification of consumer outages will become extremely fast.
Smart meters will send the "no supply" status through the
MDMS due to their last-gasp capability. A smart meter
has a battery or capacitor that provides power to it for a
few minutes to transmit valuable information like power
status. This notification will land in the ADMS as a single consumer outage. Because of this instantaneous outage notification, the time in which staff becomes aware of
the outage will be reduced drastically because it will no

Through Consumer Complaints

If any nonautomated breaker trips, the status of the breaker
will not get updated in the ADMS and the consumer will
not be instantaneously informed of the issue. In this case,
the consumer registers his or her outage complaints. The
call is registered in the consumer care center and automatically informs the ADMS as a single consumer outage.

Consumer
Web Portal
Outage
Information
ADMS

CRM
Outage Closure

Outage
Information

Automated
Device Status
From Field

Tripping
Information

FFA

Customer
Care
Center
Consumer
Mobile
App

IVRS

figure 4. An approach to attend fault in the case of an automated device.
60

ieee power & energy magazine

january/february 2020

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020

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