In the early days of rural electrification, the co-op mascot was Willie Wiredhand. Willie represented the “never-tiring, always available hiredhand to help our nation’s farmers.” Today powerline carrier, broadband fiber, and wireless technologies are increasingly improving electric co-op performance, especially during storm response. Tideland started laying the groundwork in 2009 when we installed our first smart meter followed by GIS mapping, networked data communications with our substations, and an outage management system that interfaces with downstream devices. By pinging meters at the start of an outage, dispatchers can define the outage parameters and direct crews to the utility device that is open and interrupting the flow of electricity, saving valuable time.

Mobile workforce technologies now allow us to send service orders to crew iPads for more efficient scheduling and better materials management. Mobile workforce also allows us to better track utility crews which improves safety and allows for better allocation of human resources. That’s crtically important during a disaster when so many additional personnel are working on our system.

With the completion of our new dispatch center in July, Florence provided the first real test of how these investments in technology perform during disaster. We’re pleased to report results were better than expected. We operated in a near real-time environment that provided robust information for operations personnel to effectively manage power restoration efforts. Based on past performance, we believe 1 to 2 days of restoration time was saved.