SAP IS-Utilities for Generation and Transmission Business

SAP IS-Utilities (IS-U) is an integrated component on ECC stack and is a part of Industry Solutions offered by SAP.  IS-U has evolved to meet the unique needs of the Utility Industry, such as Electricity, Water, Gas, etc.  SAP IS-U product evolution is very much aligned with the utility industry market trends such us un-bundling of utility business, de-regulation and smart metering solutions.
 It has been observed that SAP IS-U is widely accepted in the Energy Retail space more than in Energy Generation and Transmission. There is a prevailing myth that SAP IS-U is only for the customer intensive Energy Retail Business … the reality is otherwise.
 The belief is that IS-U is meant for customer centric solutions handling customer-care and billing in the B to C scenario. But the reality is that IS-U gives flexibility in handle metering operations, generation and transmission billing solutions in the B to B scenario as well.  Some classic examples are Tata Power, India and National Grid Transco, UK who use SAP ISU for generation billing and transmission billing respectively.

 Even though the generation and transmission companies have fewer customers, the number of meters for individual customer in generation and transmission business is larger.  Handling large volumes of device attributes, meter readings, installation, removal, replacements, etc. are easy with SAP IS-U.  Since high voltages are involved, the metering infrastructure is mostly associated with Current Transformers (CTs) and Potential Transformers (PTs) for measurement purposes. The multiplication factors due to this CT and PTs are automatically taken into account while calculating consumption which eliminates both the need for manual calculations and development of separate programs for calculation. Also when the CTs and PTs are replaced by CTs and PTs of different ratios, the new ratios are automatically factored during calculations.
 
In the generation and transmission sector, the metering is spread across a large geographical area and it may involve complex calculations to arrive at the billing quantity. Additionally, the meters are mostly interval meters that necessitate handling of large volume of meter reading data. In certain cases, the interval data should also be used for billing computation. SAP IS-U is all the more appropriate in such cases as explained above.
As the generation and transmission utilities handle a large volume of energy there is a greater need for energy accounting. The transmission grid network can be mapped in SAP IS-U with network hierarchy which enables loss calculations. The Energy Data Management (EDM) component of SAP IS-U can be effectively used to mine and analyze historical data for reporting and forecasting.
Generation companies adhere to the schedule based on the frequency level of the grid given by the regulators to upload power in the grid. If the generation companies comply with the schedule and do not deviate from the limits they will be entitled to receive incentive from the regulator. Otherwise the generation companies will be penalized. Using the SAP ISU’s profile management parameters can be tracked and billings calculated which will be useful to verify the imbalance bills.
 SAP IS-U can be leveraged effectively to meet the needs of the Generation & Transmission segments of the Utility industry and its deployment need not be restricted only to the Energy Retail space.

Outage System Centric
In this approach, all customer incident calls are routed to the outage management system (OMS). The OMS system aggregates all the reported incidents and coupled with the outages reported from SCADA, AMI systems etc., is able to pin point the reason and location of the outage. Based on the outage node, it is also able to determine the all the customers (or devices) that are impacted because of this outage. Once an outage has been identified, a work order is generated and sent to the work management system. The work order will have the information about the location of the outage, nature of outage, priority etc. The work management system in turn schedules the work and assign required field personnel to a particular work order (based on their schedules). The field personnel, while working on the outage, will also constantly report the expected restoration time to the work management system which in turn is updated in to the outage management system as well. If the customer calls regarding the status of the outage, the OMS system is able to provide them with the latest restoration time reported.

Customer System Centric
In this approach, all customer incident calls are routed through the customer information system that is the SAP ECC system. The SAP system in turn will integrate with the OMS system to either report an incident or if already reported, get the initial expected restoration time. The SAP ECC system will also create the work order for the work management system and receive the status of the work orders from the work order management system to report the expected restoration time to the customer.

The biggest advantage of customer system centric approach is that the various integration artifacts and interfaces built between the SAP ECC system and the work management system can be re-used for non-outage work order management processes as well. Also, since customer data resides in the customer system, it makes sense to route all customer incidents through this system.
On the other hand, the biggest advantage of outage system centric approach is the improved system performance whereby you are reducing the number of hops required to report outages. Also, depending on your implementation strategy, your call center will need all the processing power in the customer system to deal with customer calls, so it may make sense to route all other traffic, such as the ones through the IVR system to the OMS system.
Choosing an approach is purely dependent on your unique situation but one thing is for sure, the option you chose must meet the expectations set up by the regulators to handle the large call volumes during an outage situation. Not only customers want to report outages easily, it is also important to report the expected restoration time as accurately as possible and the outage restored as early as possible.
Utilities are known to use best of breed applications to deal with specific business process. As seen in this blog, they use field management systems for the field crew, work order management systems for work management, outage management systems for outage management, customer information systems (like SAP IS-U) for customer management, call center management system like SAP CRM etc. With best of breed systems come integration challenges but keeping a holistic view of the business process and innovative use of technology, it is possible to build seamless integration with these systems so that customers get the best service from utilities.

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