Tuesday, March 23, 1:00 p.m.
Emergency Preparedness: Staging for the Storm
Moderator: Sarah Whitman, Manager, Distribution Construction and Maintenance, KCP&L

Emergency management is divided into 4 phases: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Effectively preparing people and systems to respond when a disaster happens can significantly reduce the length of customer outages and improve the public’s perception of your company’s restoration efforts. This preparation not only includes internal resources but external as well.

Speaker:

• Les Boatright, Emergency Response Manager, KCP&L

Wednesday, March 24, 1:30 p.m.
Communication
Moderator: René Midence, Vice President – Marketing, RuggedCom, Inc.

Utilities across the world are leveraging mobile technologies to perform day-to-day tasks that are critical for efficient operations. When utilities are impacted by unavoidable natural disasters, communications technology can provide essential information for safely and effectively restoring services while minimizing service interruption time. Challenges associated with large scale events, including loss of power and communications, can hinder a utilities’ capacity to locate, assess, and respond appropriately. Communications technology provides critical and accurate information that can be used for service restoration crews, even those unfamiliar with the area. This session examines how communication technology streamlines the storm restoration processes, focusing on the benefits to many aspects of engineering, construction, operations, and maintenance, emergency preparedness and restoration workflows.

Speaker:

• Mitch Bradley, Director, Asset Management Solutions, Accela, Inc.

Thursday, March 25, 10:00 a.m.
Best Practices in Storm Response on U.S. Distribution Systems
Moderator: Sarah Whitman, Manager, Distribution Construction and Maintenance, KCP&L

Power delivery systems, particularly distribution systems in the U.S, whether they are overhead or underground, have always been vulnerable to the effects of major storms. In 2009, the DSTAR consortium commissioned a study of the best practices for utility storm response. The study examined the practices, procedures and experiences of U.S. utilities during major storm occurrences with the goal of understanding and conveying what went right and what went wrong during the build-up, restoration and ramp-down phases. This includes appreciating how utilities harden their systems to withstand storm elements, how they prepare, train and drill storm-duty personnel, available tools and processes for storm tracking and damage prediction, how they organize and manage response activities, procedures for assessment, repairing and switching, the role of communications and the use of technology. The result is a comprehensive discussion of many important aspects of storm restoration with an emphasis on best practices and lessons-learned from past experiences. This session summarizes key findings from the study, particularly revealing cases, and recommendations from utility experiences.

Speaker:

• Lavelle Freeman, Principal in GE Energy’s Energy Application and Systems Engineering Group, DSTAR Program Manager