Electricity Distribution It Pays to Ask the Experts: A Buyer's Guide to Distribution Design Solutions Some things just seem overwhelmingly difficult to buy; automated staking and design software shouldn't have to be included. click here for more information Maintaining Customer and Product Satisfaction The Distribution Design Solutions Client Support group focuses on DDS, which includes Staker and several integration modules, as well as LD-Pro, LD-Field and LD-Track. click here for more information Positive Outage Notification: When the Customer Calls, You're Already on it The recent maturation of outage detection and restoration notification capabilities in fixed network AMR and AMI systems provides utilities with a solid opportunity to not only strengthen the business case for investment in these advanced metering systems, but also provides an additional tool and source of critical data to address key challenges in system reliability, outage management and customer satisfaction. click here for more information Distribution Design Solutions Take Their Show on the Road Itron is a key participant in many upcoming trade shows where energy providers are invited to ask questions about our distribution design products and services, and participate in demonstrations. Come see how our extensive experience and advanced design applications have made engineers across North America more productive. click here for more information The Latest Thinking in Load Research Recent presentations by Itron's Dr. J. Stuart McMenamin focus on the impact of AMI on forecasting and load research. Read a summary of his findings and see a list of future engagements. click here for more information

It Pays to Ask the Experts: A Buyer's Guide to Distribution Design Solutions
		Some things just seem overwhelmingly difficult to buy; automated staking and design software shouldn't have to be included. Several vendors offer these products and tout their ability to put you on a path to efficiency and productivity, but how do you truly know the distribution design solution you've chosen is right for you? With more than 20 years experience in the distribution design realm, Itron is providing you with these helpful shopping tips.
Efficiency Look for distribution design solutions that offer a standard, complete construction package, allowing users to produce consistent work sketches, material lists, report packages, and other design documentation configured specifically for the client. This helps assimilate users with different skill sets and varying backgrounds. Mobility Seek out architecture that allows your solution to be run on flexible hardware configurations (desktop, laptop, tablet or handheld computer). Since the nature of your business takes you from the office to the truck to the trench, it's important you have hardware flexibility that maximizes your designers' efficiency for the environments they work in. Data Sharing and Integration Geographic information (GIS), material management and work management (WMS) systems—there are a variety of suppliers for each. In order for your distribution design solution to be successful it needs to integrate seamlessly with each. Look for a product that allows for a single point of data entry for design-related information to be shared with enterprise systems. Ease-of-Use Your new designers shouldn't have to learn new GIS or WMS functionality, accounting practices and forms, drawing symbology, or material codes. Find a design solution with all this functionality built into it. Design Consistency The design solution that's right for your utility should have your unique standards on-board to facilitate application of standard materials and design practices, even for users with different backgrounds. Combined, these features culminate not only in hard dollar cost savings, but will positively impact many utility employees across multiple divisions. For more information about purchase of distribution design solution software, click here to e-mail us.

Maintaining Customer and Product Satisfaction
		The Distribution Design Solutions Client Support group focuses on Distribution Design Studio (DDS), which includes Staker and several integration modules, and LD-Pro, LD-Field and LD-Track. With distribution design solutions, utilities elect on-site administrators who are product-trained by Itron application engineers. These representatives act as tier I and tier II support for those utilizing DDS and LD-products within the utility. This works
to the benefit of the client in several ways. Staking products interact with a number of utility core systems, including geographic information, work-order management and customer information systems. Utilities rely on a number of different vendors for these systems, swelling the possible number of integrations. This makes a staff dedicated to supporting variations in custom interfaces increasingly relevant. Also, distribution design solutions tend to be highly data-intensive; configuring the data and providing a graphical interface requires an experienced professional. Individuals supporting the data must be equally proficient. At utilities where there are more than 200 personnel utilizing a product, there is high potential for duplicate support requests. When one or two people are responsible for filtering user requests on-site, it not only lends authenticity to the request, it saves time and money for the utility. This also allows them to find common themes amongst users, leading to group training sessions. Distribution Design Solutions Client Support has a few additional tools in their arsenal as well. Just as a "black box" flight recorder on an aircraft captures a comprehensive, real-time record of each flight, Itron support staff utilizes AppSight's patented Black Box software technology to capture a "digital documentary" of non-reproducible errors at multiple synchronized levels, based on a dynamic, user-defined recording profile. Black Boxes are currently deployed at nearly half-a-dozen utilities to provide a unified view of application activity. Users of Itron's distribution design solutions also have access to Itron's client issue tracking system, TouchPoint. The portal allows clients to electronically submit requests and Itron personnel to enter and view real-time data pertaining to client issues. This helps client issues and subsequent communication to happen in a timely, concise manner. Clients can also contact support staff via phone or e-mail. There are approximately 20 domestic utilities that utilize Distribution Design Solutions Client Support. If you'd like to find out more about this specialized support from Itron, please e-mail andrew.cook@itron.com.

Positive Outage Notification: When the Customer Calls, You're Already on it
		December's widespread power outages in Oklahoma, as well as last month's outage in Florida, provided timely reminders of the outage management challenges utilities face due to weather, equipment failures, and a grid that is operated increasingly close to the red line. Beyond these large-scale outages, there are, of course, innumerable smaller-scale "nested outages" or single-service calls that irritate customers and tax utility resources from the call center to the field workforce.
The alarming reality is that when it comes to detecting and locating outages below the SCADA level, most utilities are still largely in the dark, relying on a mélange of customer calls and expensive truck rolls to determine exact location and extent of outages. The economic impact of power outages is huge as well. A recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that power outages and interruptions cost the nation and economy at least $80 billion annually. But there are new tools in the toolbox. The broader deployment fixed network AMR and AMI systems bring a significant opportunity to make outage detection, response and restoration verification a more exact science, enabling the utility to reduce its closely-watched System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) and make customers and regulators happier in the process. Itron offers positive outage detection and restoration notification capability from every meter in both its ERT-based ChoiceConnect™ Fixed Network AMR system as well as its new-generation OpenWay® AMI system. This means near-immediate outage detection and restoration notification from every meter under these networks. This article will focus on how Itron's ERT-based ChoiceConnect Fixed Network system delivers outage detection capability, and the innovations we've implemented to ensure that these systems deliver strong value from an overall outage management perspective. System Overview The ChoiceConnect Fixed Network PON system is based on the Itron Fixed Network using the R300 High Power CENTRON meter, cell control unit (CCU), and Itron Fixed Network Application Software. The system may also involve multichannel repeaters, which serve as low-cost network components that forward data to CCUs, and are deployed to optimize network costs and performance in certain RF environments. When an outage occurs, the R300 CENTRON meter applies a very short debounce period to filter out momentary outages (flickers) and then sends three PON messages to the Fixed Network's CCU collectors. By design, the PON messages are heard at multiple, spatially-diverse CCUs and repeaters to improve reception reliability. These messages are time-stamped in the collectors and alarms are generated by the CCUs and sent with high priority over the network backhaul to the outage message processor within Itron Fixed Network Application Software. Here the alarms are processed in an in-memory database and a further debounce is applied and redundant messages from multiple collectors are eliminated. Alarms are then batched into frequent, low-latency exports to the utility's outage management system (OMS). As a result, distribution system operators receive detailed, premise-level data to aid in detection, analysis and restoration efforts. Likewise, upon restoration the R300 CENTRON sends three positive restoration notification (PRN) messages to the fixed network, and also sets the restoration flag in the network's interval data message. The CCU looks for both the PRN and restoration flags, and generates time-stamped alarms to the fixed network. This combination of PRN messages and restoration flags has been implemented to provide the highest possible read reliability of restoration in order to support utility crews working on restoration in a particular area. This approach also provides better reliability in extensive and prolonged outages where the FN collectors are affected by the outage. In addition to the alarm exports to the OMS, batch reports are generated and sent to a utility system or Itron Enterprise Edition™ Meter Data Management system for regulatory reporting purposes. Avalanche Control - Managing Alarm Volume During Large-Scale Outages Since a widespread outage, such as those in Florida or Oklahoma, can generate large volumes of PON and PRN messages in a short period of time, the Itron ChoiceConnect FN outage solution has mechanisms at several levels in the system to successfully manage the flow of significant alarm volumes. At the CCU, when the initial PON or PRN messages are received, they are immediately sent over the backhaul network to provide the lowest latency delivery at the first indication of outage. While this first backhaul is taking place, the CCU begins to buffer and batch delivery of the next set of PON/PRN alarms that will be sent when the first group is complete. This approach provides efficient packaging and transmission of large volumes of alarms. In the repeater, a similar "buffer and batch" approach is used to capture the PON/PRN messages, buffer them briefly, and then transmit them as a group to the CCUs. With this approach in a large outage, the repeated PON/PRN messages are delivered immediately after the CCU has received and processed the PON/PRN messages it received directly from the R300 meters. This provides an orderly staging of delivery of messages to and through the CCU and backhaul. At the FN head end, PON/PRN messages are again buffered and batched for orderly delivery to the utility OMS and mechanisms are available to allow the OMS to control the flow outage notifications from the FN collection engine. Also, the matching of PON and PRN messages to filter out momentary outages is used to scale down unnecessary traffic to the OMS. User Interface The ChoiceConnect Fixed Network user interface has a parameter that enables utilities to define the time period an endpoint needs to be without power before it is reported as a persistent outage versus a flicker. This setting determines how outages are defined for system reports and when the event should be reported to the OMS as a true outage. Itron Fixed Network Application Software also provides outage duration and momentary outage reports that give detailed information to system users following outage events. The Outage Duration report lists endpoints that have transmitted outage and restoration notifications, as well as the duration of the outage per endpoint. If the system indicates the outage is ongoing at the time the report is run, those endpoints still without power will be listed in a separate grouping on the report. The Momentary Outage report lists endpoints that have experienced blinks and the number of blinks that occurred per endpoint. An On-Demand Read or Power Verification transaction is available to help troubleshoot outage situations for customers and utility personnel. This functionality can be used to determine if power has been restored to avoid unnecessary truck rolls or to keep a truck from leaving an area where power is not back to 100 percent of customers in the area. This transaction can also be of great help in non-outage situations when a fresh reading from the endpoint will assist the customer service representative in discussions with the customer. The mapping components of the FN user interface also include an icon that indicates where a positive outage notification has been received. The interface also lists the endpoint's outage state and also has fields available for storing customer account, meter, premise and transformer numbers, which makes troubleshooting more expedient. Summary The recent maturation of outage detection and restoration notification capabilities in fixed network AMR and AMI systems provides utilities with a solid opportunity to not only strengthen the business case for investment in these advanced metering systems, but also provides an additional tool and source of critical data to address key challenges in system reliability, outage management and customer satisfaction.

Itron Distribution Design Solutions Take Their Show on the Road
		For more than 20 years, Itron has been crafting the most advanced software tools available for distribution system design, analysis and optimization. Want to see these tools firsthand? Itron is a key participant in many upcoming trade shows and conferences where utilities are invited to ask questions about our distribution products and services, and participate in relevant demonstrations. Come see how our extensive experience and advanced design applications have made utility engineering teams across North America more productive.
NWPPA Engineering & Operations Conference April 7 - 11, 2008 Silver Legacy Hotel, Reno, NV Itron distribution design solutions group will feature Distribution Design Studio (DDS), our modular, comprehensive software solution that addresses the line design challenges facing many utilities. IEEE/PES (Transmission & Distribution Conference) April 21 - 24, 2008 McCormick Place, Chicago, IL In addition to a host of other Itron products and services, the distribution design solutions group will be on hand to feature DDS; Distribution Asset Analysis (DAA), which precisely maps the condition of your distribution network, even under what-if scenarios that you define; and LD-Pro, our industry standard, full-featured software for overhead and underground distribution line design. SEE Conference June 25 - 27, 2008 Sheraton New Orleans, New Orleans, LA Our group will feature DDS and LD-Pro at this conference. Interested in demonstrations of these products a little closer to home or can't make it to any of the above mentioned conferences? Itron will be happy to host a roadshow in your area, where these solutions are on display and available for demonstration, eliminating the need for you to travel long distances. To express interest in being part of the Itron road show, or if an online demo fits into your schedule better, contact Jarod Tait (509) 891-3543 or jarod.tait@itron.com.

The Latest Thinking in Load Research
		Dr. J. Stuart McMenamin, managing director of forecasting at Itron, recently made presentations at the AEIC Load Research Workshop (February 25-27) and the Western Load Research Association (WLRA) meeting (March 12-14). The presentations focused on the Impact of AMI on Forecasting and Load Research. The presentation began with an overview of the typical interactions between financial forecasting and load research in the current
environment. Dr. McMenamin discussed how load research data is used to improve financial forecasting models and also to support weather normalization and financial closing processes. Conversely, forecasting results, such as calendarized monthly sales, are used to improve load research estimates when ratio expansion is used. The presentation then proceeded to focus on changes in forecasting and load research functions likely to occur with the transition to AMI technologies and meter data management systems. The main conclusion was that with AMI data, there will be significant changes in standard load research processes and forecasting processes related to financial closing. Budget forecasting, weather normalization, and forecast variance analysis tasks will remain largely unchanged. On April 29, 2008, Dr. McMenamin will present a one-hour free seminar titled Comparison of Load Research Expansion Methods. To register, visit www.itron.com/forecastingworkshops.