IEEE PES General Meeting
Task Force on Distribution Management Systems
Monday, July 22, 2013
West Meeting Room 115, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Chair: Bob Uluski
The meeting was called to order by Chairman Bob Uluski at 3:12 PM immediately following the
Distribution Working Group meeting in the same room. There were a total of 42 members, including
officers, in attendance.
Bob Uluski introduced the other officers of the DMS Task Force: Vice Chair – Marc Patterson, Idaho
Power and Secretary – John Sell, Alstom Grid.
The minutes from the previous Task Force meetings were discussed and it was confirmed that minutes
from the last 3 meetings are all posted on the DMS Task Force web site at
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/td/dist/da/dmstf.html.
Bob Uluski presented list of 5 related SDWG/DMSTF panels and activities for the remainder of the week.
Members of the audience also noted there is a super session on OMS/DMS scheduled for Wednesday
morning.
It was noted that invited panels for 2014 meeting may be limited. Topics were solicited for DMSTF.
Suggested topics are modeling and advanced applications, particularly State Estimation. Vendors and
academics were encouraged to submit ideas. It was noted that 4 panels were accepted for Distribution
this year but probably fewer would be held next year and they will be determined by vote.
Gary Taylor of Brunel University stated that he likes the idea of an SE panel and suggested we could
make it a world-wide event from a participation standpoint. Several attendees provided support for
both the SE and modeling ideas. Valentina Dabic of BC Hydro suggested discussions not just on
modeling but on real-time DMS model updates.
The attendees were advised to submit an idea in a 150 word description and list the probable panel
members for consideration for next year’s conference.
Avnaesh Jayantilal of Alstom Grid mentioned that the State Estimation committee has recognized that
the historical focus and terminology has all been Transmission/EMS-centric and that they intend to
update terminology to include distribution. It was recommended that we should coordinate this activity
with them.
Upcoming events were discussed:
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JTCM in New Orleans Jan 12-16, 2014
DMS panel session of DMS experiences at Distributech
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Utility DMS-OMS/DA University course
Bob Uluski reviewed the DMS “State of the Industry” survey that he conducted on DMS/OMS activities
and plans within utilities. He stated that this is not a scientific poll, just information from people who
are interested in the topic.
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There were 39 responses from utilities - mostly U.S. (33), Canada (5) and Australia (1). Most
respondents were from IOUs but there were also several municipals and government agencies.
Poll results were 28% of respondents were up and running, 4were conducting pilots. 3-4 utilities
stated their systems were at mid-life and Hydro Quebec announce they are at end-of-life and
are going to move to an off-the-shelf system.
DMS apps being implemented – FLISR and VVO are # 1 and #2. Discussions were held regarding
who has FISR running, whether it is centralized or decentralized, etc. It was stated that FLISR
requires lots of sensors and field equipment but that lots of people don’t know that. Larry Clark
stated SoCo was doing FISR before they had control room apps and computers. Steve Russell of
Duke Energy stated they would say they’re using it, but there are still relay programming issues.
Russell noted that field crews are pushing them for fault location information and mentioned
that control points and interconnect points are required to make it viable.
Preferred architecture for FLISR – centralized and hybrid share #1.
Preferred architecture for VVO was centralized >60%, hybrid <20%
Approach to Data Acquisition – SCADA integral to DMS, EMS, SCADA separate from DMS
Status of OMS – up and running 60%, 28% mid-life assessment
OMS system functions - preferred DMS/OMS architecture - #1 DMS and OMS on different
systems that share data digitally, 39%. DMS/OMS on 1 system with shared model, 35%. 15%
have separate systems that don’t talk to each other.
Brad Williams of Oracle made a presentation titled “Need for Combined OMS/DMS” .
Ed Carlsen of Georgia Power made a presentation titled “Highly Integrated DMS/OMS System”.
Vic Romero of SDG& made a presentation on their OMS/DMS project.
It was asked if anyone is doing lock-out/tagout all of the way down to DG. Steve Russell of Duke Energy
stated that it’s on their radar.
A question was asked if anyone was concerned that getting earlier fault knowledge (by 10 minutes with
AMI) increases SAIDI? Answer was yes, but that it only occurs initially and that it can be explained to
management that it’s due to better information.
A question was asked about how accurate is customer connectivity data and how it’s maintained when
linemen are moving customers around? One answer was that the GIS team uses outage data to correct
it. Another answer was that you can capture lat/long of meter when it’s installed and the lat/long of
address and transformer connection. If you make sure all 3 match the data is probably good..
From 4:40-5:00 there was a short roundtable discussion on topics of interest to the audience.
Bob Uluski solicited suggestions for next meeting.
Meeting was adjourned at 5 PM.