(Seguin) — Seguin utility customers will soon have a new way to report outages and receive updates on efforts to restore their service. The city is preparing to launch a new outage management system designed to improve communication with customers and help utility crews respond more efficiently.
Smart Grid Solutions Manager John Saldana says customers will still be able to report outages by telephone, but the new system will also provide a more robust online reporting option.
“We have a simple form for the customers to go through. They’ll select the service, they’ll put their address in, and they’ll kind of hit next, and they’ll go through the process. They’ll come to a next page, and once again, all these integrations go into letting them know whether they’re part of an outage. If they are part of an outage, the system will let them know you really don’t need to go any further. If they’re not part of the outage, they can continue and they can submit the information,” said Saldana.
Saldana says once an outage has been reported and confirmed, the system will keep customers informed about the work being done to restore service.
“This is a really important part of the process because it kicks off multiple steps for all the citizens. One, they get notifications. Two, our crews get information (and) our dispatch gets information. Now, part of that integration is that our dispatch, they can look and verify customer accounts. They can actually ping the meter just prior to sending trucks out, rolling trucks. They can do a number of things prior to that outage being confirmed. If the outage is actually confirmed, what happens is our citizens will now see a text message letting them know that there’s an outage at their at their house,” said Saldana.
The system is also designed to help utility crews better coordinate their response to electrical and water outages, improving the city’s ability to identify problems and restore service.
“Right now we have a lot of traffic going between the dispatch and the crews. This gives them real-time details on their mobile device and they’ll get their assignment. They’ll be able to look at the details and of course locate where the outage is at. They can also track the repair. So, this is really important, which is they’re taking pictures, they’re getting evidence, they’re taking videos, they’re assessing the problem, they’re documenting the work, and they’ll send that information to the customers as they need to,” said Saldana.
Saldana says the ultimate goal is to get utility services restored as quickly as possible.
“We want to try to improve some of the time that it takes for us to do restoration. So, on the electric side, we’re at three and half hours over the last nine months, (and) six and a half hours for water. We can’t say that we’re going to improve how fast it takes to repair a main, but providing all this new information to them, hopefully they can be on site quicker, work the problem faster, and reduce some of these hours,” said Saldana.
Saldana and Utilities Director Terri Ruckstuhl demonstrated the new system during a recent meeting of the Seguin City Council. The new outage reporting option is expected to be available soon on the city’s website at seguintexas.gov.