GIS BASED POWER OUTAGE ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT

Abstract

The massive breakdown of power in New York and neighboring states in the Unites States and Canada for nearly two days in August 2003 is still something of a mystery. Nobody is yet able to trace out the ultimate culprit - human failure or mechanical breakdown or just a failure of the entire system, hardly changed over a century, by which power is fed from source to consumer across a national grid. But one person's crisis can often emerge as another's opportunity. So other nations should learn from that incidence and should develop efficient and fault free information system in power sector. After China, India is the world's largest market for electricity, with an annual growth rate of 9 to 10%. The Indian government has embarked on a plan to bring power to the entire country by the year 2012 (Shubhabrata M., 1999). With this mission in mind it becomes very important for the state electricity boards and utility companies to deliver continuous, uninterrupted, fault free and good quality power services to their customers. Building customer loyalty is one of the key strategies of the service providers. The two critical elements of customer service delivery plan include the ability to communicate effectively with customers, and the capacity of the information system to deal with outages (Nova Scotia Power Inc., 2002). In case of unplanned outage, the primary challenge of a utility company is to deliver excellent customer service and improve efficiencies to benefit customers.