June 25, 2014

Little River Electric Cooperative Adds Futura

Little River Electric Cooperative Adds Futura’s Outage Management System

Little River Electric Cooperative in Abbeville, South Carolina, improves outage response times and reduces outage duration with a new Outage Management System by Futura.

FuturaOMS gives Little River EC the power to input from multiple sources, such as AMI, IVR, CIS, and SCADA, and offers automated outage predictions, network tracing and switching to help pinpoint outages and speed dispatching of crews. The new system communicates with Little River EC’s current systems in real time, with two-way integration, giving utility employees dependable, current outage information with the click of a button. “We were looking to accelerate our restoration times with outages. The old way of sifting through calls and just giving the linemen the location numbers meant that they had to stop and make plans on where to begin. With the OMS system the dispatchers can send them directly to the device that is out. This makes it better for the consumer and we also have a means of letting them see outages in their area from our web site,” said Mike Ellis, Director of Engineering for Little River Electric Cooperative. “When we started looking for an outage management system, it only made sense to go with a product from a company that we have had such a great relationship with. Futura has always delivered a great product and support has always been outstanding!”

While it is true that the system greatly helps employees, the biggest benefit goes to Little River EC customers. A big goal for utilities is to restore power to customers as quickly as possible, and in the event of extended outages, customer communication is key. FuturaOMS offers the capability to greatly improve the customer experience in these areas and more. The seamless integration with current systems, powered by software from Atlanta, GA-based SEDC, speeds customer information searches, identifying callers who are in existing outage areas and even publishing outage data to Little River Electric Cooperative’s website.

In a world where the dependence on electricity has become absolute, a reliable and high-performing OMS is a necessity for successful utility operations. Little River Electric Cooperative now has the capability to be the best.

About Little River Electric Cooperative

Little River EC serves members in Abbeville, Anderson, McCormick and Greenwood counties of South Carolina. Their 30 employees serve 14,000 consumers over 2143 miles of line, averaging 6.5 consumers per mile. Learn more at: www.lreci.coop.