About Outage Storm Mode

Unfortunately, utilities and their customers are often subject to natural disasters that cause disruptions to AMI networks. These outage events can be related to hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. During these severe outages, AMI systems do not always provide outage and restoration events from the devices. Without these outage and restoration events, Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management processes could estimate measurements that would be billed by the CIS. This will lead to unhappy customers, potentially bad press, and lots of manual cleanup work after the fact.

While this is a problem for major outage events, this can also occur with smaller outages (smaller blackouts, planned outages, etc.). This can potentially become an issue anytime the AMI network has a significant number of devices failing to communicate.

This module includes outage processing to improve estimation accuracy during major outages. The system will automatically stop estimations when the number of meter readings coming is less than a user defined tolerance. This tolerance is based on a significant drop in the read percentage for all devices in a similar postal code, service type, and Head End. Estimations will automatically resume when the device returns to normal operation. This can occur through a number of actions: read percentage for the surrounding area returns to normal, regular data is received from the device, or a power restoration device event is received from the device.

Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management also includes the ability to manually override "storm mode". This override will allow estimations to resume even if the outage hasn't been fully resolved. This will be useful if network fixes take too long and the utility has decided that customers should be billed on an estimate after a few days pass.

The diagram below illustrates the primary flow for Outage Storm Mode processing. The steps include:

1. The Dimension Scanner batch (D1-ADS) monitors the Meter Communication Tracking Dimension Scanner business object. New Aggregator Measuring Components will be created for every applicable Service Type, Postal Code, and Head End in the system.
2. The Aggregation Monitor batch (D2-AGG) runs to execute the logic for the Meter Communication Tracking Aggregator Measuring Component. This logic will aggregate all meters for the defined Service Type, Postal Code, and Head End. Once the read percentage is found for that day then a measurement will be created for the Aggregator Measuring Component.
3. The Widespread Outage batch (D2-WSO) runs to determine if any of the "Meter Communication Tracking Aggregator" Measuring Components have dropped below the defined threshold on the MDM Master Configuration. If it has dropped enough, then an Estimation Suppression Activity is created for each of the affected Service Points and the "Meter Communication Tracking Aggregator" Measuring Component is set to an "Active Outage" indicator.
4. If the Smart Meter Monitor batch (D1-SMMTR) runs to generate estimates while an Estimation Suppression Activity is active for a Service Point, then the Service Point will either be skipped for estimation or will have zero consumption filled for all data with a condition code of "No Read - Outage Fill".
5. There are a number of methods available to resume normal operation and close out the Estimation Suppression Activity. These include the following:
   1. The read percentage reaches a "normal level" again as defined in the MDM Master Configuration. This will be detected by the Widespread Outage batch (D2-WSO).
   2. When non-estimated data is received from a device, this will close out an open Estimation Suppression Activity.
   3. If the Standard Event Name Extendable Lookup is configured with the End Estimation Suppression algorithm (D2-EN-ESTSUP), then any Power Up event this is configured for will close out an open Estimation Suppression Activity.
   4. Estimation Suppression Activities can also be closed manually be a user by navigating to the Activity, using the "Edit" button", and add an End Date.
6. The Estimation Suppression Monitor batch (D2-ESTSU) runs for all Estimation Suppression Activities to determine if the related "Meter Communication Tracking Aggregator" Measuring Component is no longer in a state of "Active Outage". If the widespread outage has ended, then the Estimation Suppression activity will be set with an end date.
7. The next time the Smart Meter Monitor batch (D1-SMMTR) runs it will generate estimated data as normally configured.

In order to determine if an area is experiencing a widespread outage, the median read percentage of prior days is used as the basis for comparison. The median was chosen instead of the average to help reduce the impact of outlier values. This is illustrated in the example below.