How PEC Reduces Outages With Strategic Planning
Our mission is to provide safe and reliable electric service 24/7, and fulfilling that commitment is a cooperative-wide effort.
At PEC, we believe in working both harder and smarter to serve our members. That work produces results — last year, the average outage time for PEC members was less than half that of the most recently reported Texas average!
By combining good old-fashioned hard work with new technology, we’re reducing outages, even during extreme weather events. Employees across departments work together to collect and share data so we can target upgrades and repairs where they are needed most.
PEC uses predictive modeling tools to forecast where outages are likely to occur during a weather event. The same software can also specify where an issue has occurred on the system, so we can begin repairs sooner.
In addition, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) meters can automatically notify the control center when they go out, meaning we can at times respond to an outage before it is reported by the member.
Equipment failures at substations have the potential to impact thousands of members, so our system is designed to allow us to reroute power and keep members online while repairs are made. We use infrared imaging to reveal “hot spots” and prevent equipment failures that would cause major outages. Plus, our maintenance program is designed to allow us to service equipment without taking members offline, in some cases further reducing the time they are without power.
New technologies and analytics offer planning tools for reliability. PEC uses advanced software that allows us to build 3D models of transmission structures, place them in their exact environment, and see how they perform under various demand and weather conditions.
Data is collected and reviewed to find helpful solutions. Thanks to our information technology team, various systems can now communicate with each other, unlocking deeper analysis that is used to strengthen the system.
It’s a shared passion for results that adds up to a culture of reliability. We’re proud to serve you!
