Patent ID: 7739138
Filing Date: 2010-06-15
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method for integrating and providing utility management information of an utility distribution system based upon data from a geographic information systems (GIS) database and data sources including a customer information data, billing data, interactive voice recognition (IVR) call management data, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data, mobile crew management (MCM) data, automatic meter reading (AMR) data, automated vehicle location (AVL) data, engineering analysis data supported by 3 rd party software packages, said computer-implemented method comprising: importing and synchronizing said data from the GIS database and said sources so as to support on-demand queries for the utility management information, said importing-accomplished with a computer system, displaying locations of vehicles based upon the AVL data, said displaying accomplished with a display of said computer system, and executing, with said computer system, processes of: (I) mapping parent outages of an electric distribution network of the utility distribution system in an electronic model map, determining a protective device nearest to one of the parent outages which was incorrectly predicted, splitting said one parent outage into one or more child outages, associating the child outages with said one parent outage, restoring one of the child outages thereby partially restoring at least one parent outage, automatically re-associating the restored child outage with the partially-restored parent outage, deleting said one parent outage from the map without entering said one parent outage in a historical outage log, counting said one parent outage and said one child outage only as one outage and associating affected customers and trouble calls in connection only with said one counted outage thereby automatically reducing an outage frequency which reflects system reliability, and (II) decomposing the electric distribution network by phase into three single-phase electrical networks respectively represented in said computer system in the form of a searchable binary tree for each of the single-phase electrical networks, storing data of each of the three single-phase electrical networks in a cache memory of the utility distribution system, and displaying the electric distribution network on said display in a graphical user interface of said computer system as a logical overlay of the three single-phase electrical networks containing logical associations to single-line GIS representations of conductors, each of the single-line GIS representations of conductors including one line segment labeled only with a conductor ID and at least one phase attribute to reflect corresponding physical geometry of the electric distribution network, displaying secondary service lines between the conductors and customers extending from said line segments, displaying in-line protective devices on top of said line segment representing a conductor protected by the in-line protective devices, and processing and predicting outages by phase based upon stored data of the three single-phase electrical networks, said customers, and said in-line protective devices without tracing phase attribute data corresponding to said single-line GIS representations of conductors.