METHOD OF TRACKING POWER OUTAGES

• US 20090248214A1
• Filed: 06/11/2009
• Published: 10/01/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Firstenergy Corporation
• Original Assignee: Firstenergy Corporation
• Inventors: Fickey, Karl J., Homsher, David V.
• Granted Patent: US 7,801,647 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/286
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

A method for analyzing historical outages at the customer level for the purposes of determining root-cause and possible corrective actions is described herein. The present invention enables a utility to identify problem areas and prevent future outages from occurring.

Claims

1. A method for tracking power outages, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving information that at least one power outage has occurred;

relaying the information regarding the at least one power outage to a database;

determining at least one circuit affected by the at least one power outage;

determining a number of customers associated with the at least one circuit; and

,

creating an individual outage record for each associated customer.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the outage record comprises at least a date of the power outage, a time of the power outage, a date of resumption of power, and a time of resumption of power.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the outage record further comprises at least a reason for the power outage and a project number.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

creating an indicator based on an expectation scale.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein creating an indicator based on an expectation scale further comprises the step of:

creating an indicator based upon an analysis of each associated customer'"'"'s outage history, wherein the outage history data is extracted from the database.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises the step of:

sending the outage records to at least one personal digital assistant.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the method further comprises the steps of:

providing a graphic representation of a map showing location of each associated customer; and

,

placing a graphic representation of the indicator for each associated customer.

8. The method of claim 4, wherein the expectation scale is determined by customer surveys.

9. A method for tracking events, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving information that at least one event has occurred;

relaying the information regarding the at least one event to a database;

determining a number of customers associated with the at least one event;

creating an individual event record for each associated customer;

analyzing the events for each associated customer;

comparing the number of events for each associated customer with an expected number of events; and

,

creating at least two indicators, wherein one of the at least two indicators indicates that the number of events is at or exceeds the number of expected events, wherein one of the at least two indicators indicates that the number of events is below the expected number of events.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the event record comprises at least a date of the event and a time of the event.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the event record further comprises at least a reason for the event, a date of resumption of an activity interrupted by the event, a time of resumption of an activity interrupted by the event, and a project number.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises the steps of:

providing a graphic representation of a map showing location of each associated customer; and

,

placing a graphic representation of the indicator for each associated customer.