POWER January 2022 - 16

FOCUS ON O&M
Forces of Nature Demand
Better Workforce
Management
Entergy, the largest utility in Louisiana,
was faced with the massive task of repairing
some 30,000 poles, 36,000 spans
of wire, and 6,000 transformers that were
damaged when Hurricane Ida hit the state
in September. The utility dug deeply into
its mutual assistance networks to summon
27,000 workers from 41 states to
join the restoration effort. And still, some
of the company's customers reportedly
remained without power almost a month
after the storm hit.
It's not hurricanes but another climate
change-related threat-wildfires-that is
prompting Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)
to push forward with a similarly laborintensive
initiative. This past summer,
the Northern California utility announced
plans to put underground about 10,000
miles of electric distribution power lines,
part of a wildfire risk-mitigation effort
that involves partnering with material
suppliers, contractors, and other utilities
that provide internet, phone, and natural
gas service.
As heavily as utilities tend to rely on
supplemental workers-contractors (Figure
4) and workers on loan from other
companies can at times represent 70%
to 80% of a utility's total workforce, according
to the non-profit Center for Energy
Workforce Development-it's critical
that they have a flexible and highly responsive
workforce management strategy,
with digital capabilities that enable
them to both proactively and reactively
scale up, scale down, and mobilize core
and contingent workers. In particular,
with climate change impacting their businesses
and their workforces more than
ever, utilities need the ability to seamlessly
integrate, monitor, connect and
communicate with, coordinate, and securely
share information with their own
workers, as well as supplemental workers,
during an emergency and during the
regular course of business.
Capabilities like these are all predicated
on the utility having a cloud-based
platform that's accessible to partner entities
outside company walls. To fully leverage
their mutual assistance networks
(Entergy is part of four of them), utilities
need to be able to securely provide network
access to neighboring utilities in order
to share vital information about their
system assets and outages, in real time,
without exposing proprietary data.
Giving
supplemental workers
16
vis4.
Utilities regularly use contract workers to supplement their own employees, often in the
field to perform maintenance and repairs, particularly in the effort to restore power after extreme
weather events. It's important that utilities have systems in place to securely provide
network access to other utilities and workers to share information without exposing proprietary
data. Courtesy: SAP
ibility into current conditions across the
system, along with resources (such as
schematics, Global Positioning Systems
or GPS info, and asset documentation)
to help them repair or replace specific
assets, speeds the process of bringing
extra crews online. From this intelligent
platform, all the relevant parties can gain a
shared view into what's happening across
the system, ensuring they get the relevant
information they need, such as work
orders and safety information, in a timely
fashion. Such a platform also can function
as sort of a " control tower, " whereby a
utility can view conditions across its system,
then deploy teams based on that
situational awareness. To protect sensitive
information, companies can make it
available only via the cloud, and only by
permission, so workers aren't storing information
on their mobile devices, where
it's more of a cybersecurity risk.
Mobile-enabled, in-the-moment network
access and support for workers in
the field are a must in responding to a
climate-related disaster. Crews and engineers
in the field need the ability to
access system data and other critical
information from the cloud in real time,
via a tablet or other mobile device, so
they can take rapid action. Using a mobile
app, they could, for example, access
virtual reality tools in a digital twin environment
to walk them through the repair
of a specific asset, get additional " live "
coaching on the repair from an actual human
being, if necessary, and communicate
the progress of their work in near
real-time.
PG&E's undergrounding initiative is
the type of labor-intensive, proactive infrastructure
project that can really benefit
from advanced modeling capabilities
www.powermag.com
such as digital twins. Using its own system
data, as well as data sourced from
nearby pipeline operators, internet and
phone providers, and others, PG&E could
develop plans for locating underground
electricity infrastructure in existing rightsof-way
used by those other infrastructure
providers, then deploy the right workers-contractors
and their own employees-accordingly.
For such an approach
to work, the utility also will need cloudbased
workforce management tools that
are tightly integrated with work order, human
resources, and payroll processes, to
ensure appropriately skilled workers from
multiple organizations are dispatched to
the correct locations, and to manage payroll
for disparate payees.
With the ability to collect operational
and situational data remotely from Internet
of Things-connected assets (such
as transformers), then analyze that data
using machine learning- and artificial intelligence-powered
predictive analytics
tools, utilities can deploy workers where
they're needed most, and address issues
like an overheating transformer before it
becomes problematic. Once an issue is
identified, such a system can automatically
generate a work order, promptly
send it to a crew leader's mobile device,
and quickly initiate a fix.
Technologies like this aren't just a figment
of the imagination-they're in use
today, giving utility companies the digital
workforce management capabilities they
need to reckon with the very real threats
that climate change poses to their assets
and the quality of service they provide to
their customers during a disaster and
otherwise. ■
-James McClelland is the senior global
director of SAP Industries-Utilities.
POWER | January 2022
http://www.powermag.com
POWER January 2022

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