更智能的运营控制中心 for energy and utilities

Enrique Bolivar

March 05, 2024

Next-generation Operations Control Centre (OCC) will enable mission-critical communications to improve safety and efficiency.

When it comes to the energy and utilities industry, there is no room for error in day-to-day operations, in either emergency or non-emergency situations.

This is top of mind in the Operations Control Centre, a mission-critical unit responsible for electricity generation, transmission, 分配和服务连续性. Monitoring operations and anticipating problems are the main OCC functions. This team is focused on minimising service disruptions, 保护人员和资产, and ensuring the day-to-day-operations run smoothly, 安全可靠.

 

However, disruptions to service do occur. 比如人为失误, 极端天气条件, 物理攻击, 容量约束, or operational accidents can cause unacceptable service interruptions for end users and lead to resource shortages. 事实上，根据a KPMG report, from 2013 and 2020, the number of outage hours in the U.S. 翻了一番，达到每年8个.

So, 当服务中断时, the OCC must provide a coordinated response, 及时地, to recover from service disruption and minimise the impact on end 客户服务 and global operations.

This is where multimedia communications services can help. In this blog, I will walk through the OCC’s span of responsibilities and the solutions available today that can help them manage this mandate and prepare for the future.

OCC的任务

Protecting technical staff and the public is vital, which energy and utilities organisations must do while managing multiple threats and ensuring service restoration. As an example, imagine a situation where a transformer or transmission tower is on fire. In either case, the station operator or field technician must contact the OCC, who will declare an emergency and immediately initiate an action plan to both de-energise the power line and avoid service disruption.

同时, the Operations Control Centre is tasked with maintaining performance, 提供优质服务, and keeping operational costs within budget. In non-emergency conditions, these tasks include:

• Scheduling work related to energy generation, transmission, and distribution
• Adding renewable energy sources to the grid
• Coordinating actions after emergency events, 如电路恢复, 客户服务, 应急计划设计
• Planning preventive maintenance tasks
• Accommodating increases in load demands that may come from adding equipment such as bigger cables or transformers

The role of a smart Operations Control Centre

With this broad and mission-critical mandate, multimedia communications services are crucial to success. A smart Operations Control Centre enables operational effectiveness through a robust telephone system, 接听/调度工作站, and collaboration tools that maintain an accurate information flow.

Efficient OCC operations depend on having the right solution in place to coordinate collaborative work between stakeholders, who may represent different business units. A complex ecosystem of solutions converges in the OCC where staff are often challenged to deliver new services that require new applications. This means that everything must be integrated for effective control of operations.

The modules that make up the solution must be open and able to integrate with others. APIs are a key element that enable interconnection of different ecosystem components. With open APIs, operators can create new services, integrate applications, and meet new requirements. APIs also create opportunities for innovation.

丰富而强大的通信

Multimedia communications services are vital to an efficient OCC. 没有通信, there would be no service as they support the stakeholder interaction and collaboration that minimises recovery times during disruptions.

Therefore, a foundation based on reliable/secure communications is essential to:

• Support complementary services such as call taking/dispatch
• Enable coordination and collaboration between stakeholders
• 提高信息意识
• Offer openness to ease the integration with different functional blocks in the OCC

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise offers a broad communications portfolio that covers telephony services based on the 阿尔卡特朗讯OmniPCX®企业版. This portfolio includes the following solutions:

• 视觉通知助手 (VNA) for incident and emergency management
• Voice recording to monitor, record and analyse all OCC interactions
• 调度控制台 to deal with high volumes of call taking/dispatching and enhance collaboration
• 远程视觉辅助 (RVA) to streamline on-site interventions by improving interactions between field workers and OCC experts

生态开放

These communications services are integrated and interconnected with OCC functional blocks (such as radio and video surveillance systems) through standard protocols and APIs. 此外, 阿尔卡特朗讯OmniPCX开放网关 – a dedicated API server – increases integration capabilities, providing a set of RESTful APIs to host ALE and customer applications such as:

• 电话服务
• 管理功能
• Analytics

实时协作

Collaboration is vital for OCC task coordination and information awareness. Integrating business processes and communications solutions is key to enabling efficient operations. The Rainbow™ by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise CPaaS solution integrates with the customer environment to provide communications services such as chat, file sharing, 任何设备上的语音和视频. 同时, Rainbow leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI), chatbots, system databases and analytics to automate and simplify operational processes and create new services.

The evolution to a collaborative operational environment is the next step for many OCCs. Integrating different functional blocks is the key driver to enable interaction between the stakeholders, 增加沟通, 提高态势感知能力, 增强决策能力.

What’s next for the Operations Control Centre?

According to a KPMG report, 73% of energy and utilities companies in 2020 viewed an increase of automation across their operations as a strong priority. A next generation OCC must be prepared to support more automated operations and embrace technology innovation.

Digital transformation is at the heart of the next generation OCC. Integration of new components will add value to complex OCC environments, moving them from standardised operations to predictive capabilities, process automation and seamless collaboration between stakeholders.

This evolution is based on three main pillars:

1. SIP technology at the core of the communications solution to support/deliver advanced telephony features and pave the way for a smooth migration to the next generation

2. A cloud platform to connect to the OCC. WebRTC services provide borderless communications and collaboration between customers and employees through integration with mobile apps and multimedia self-service interfaces, and commercial apps using the Rainbow connector

3. Hybrid private/public cloud solutions to deliver new services and increase reliability

The evolution to next generation OCC for energy and utilities companies offers significant benefits, including:

• Implementation of a fast recovery plan through a highly resilient infrastructure
• Enriched OCC interaction by connecting IoT and AI solutions to automate processes and enable predictive capabilities to reduce threats and improve recovery times
• Enhanced contextual information that qualifies incidents, 提高了效率, and empowers the staff to collaborate and make decisions

更智能的运营控制中心

Multimedia communications services are the cornerstone of an efficient OCC, supporting interaction and collaboration between the various stakeholders in the OCC to avoid incidents, accelerate responses to service disruptions and ensure safety for all.