In Florida, Hurricanes are inevitable, given the state is a peninsula with the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean along its borders. While a utility may be fortunate enough to dodge a significant storm and its accompanying outages one season, odds are they’ll be hit with “the big one” in the coming years. The team at Kissimmee Utility Authority understood this. They also knew their storm communication efforts and outage map needed a modernized upgrade.
“Outages are a personal thing,” said Michael Wagner, Manager of Dispatch Compliance at KUA. “We needed a map that reflected that.”
That’s why, ahead of the 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season, the KUA team partnered with DataCapable to upgrade their outage map with a map powered by The DataCapable Platform. Explore how the rapid deployment of KUA’s map became strategic foresight as their team was confronted with the one most destructive storms ever to hit the United States – Hurricane Ian.
Background
DataCapable is a software company dedicated to delivering situational awareness when it matters most. The team at DataCapable develops software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions tailored for the utility industry, emergency management professionals, government agencies, corporations, and more. Products powered by The DataCapable® Platform™ combine patented artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning with human-in-the-loop verification to capture, automate and distribute actionable information in real-time.
Kissimmee Utility Authority (KUA) was founded in 1901 and is Florida’s sixth largest municipally-owned utility. The mid-size utility provides electric services to 90,000 customers in Osceola County, Florida, and is known throughout the utilities industry for its award-winning excellence in customer service.
Their Vision Statement is “To be the right utility, providing the right services, at the right time,” so it shouldn’t be surprising that KUA views its services through a neighborly, personal lens.
After learning about DataCapable and seeing its outage maps at a conference, the KUA team connected with us leading up to the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season.
Prior to working with the DC team, KUA primarily relied on an outage management system and map produced by Schneider Electric for its storm response efforts. KUA team members often found it to be slow, requiring customers to drill down to their location to see details. The map also relied on data that had to be cached, which meant updates were not timely.
The Challenge
The Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from June 1 to November 30.
By the time KUA was ready to partner with DataCapable and upgrade its outage map, the 2022 Hurricane Season was rapidly approaching. With less than a 30-day deadline, KUA wanted its new outage map up and running in time to help customers learn about the map’s new features and capabilities.
“While our solutions are ready to work out-of-the-box on Day 1, our development team often tailors certain features and functions based on a Partner’s unique needs and challenges to ensure they’re getting a resource that will help their team,” said Katy Desjardins, DataCapable’s Director of Customer Success. “Implementing a rapid deployment for Kissimmee presented a challenge that we were excited to take on.”
The Solution
After coordinating with DataCapable’s development team throughout the implementation process, KUA’s upgraded Outage Map proved invaluable for their team with immediate payoffs.
“The impact was immediate,” said KUA’s Application Development Manager, Chris Reigle. “The map actually helped our team correct some internal data on our end.”
Additionally, KUA discovered the ability to post dynamic updates throughout events and share restoration plans with stakeholders. This functionality reduced traffic to their call center and increased organizational transparency and efficiency.
“Years ago, our storm response strategy consisted of staffing up our call centers and answering non-stop calls until everyone was back on,” said KUA’s Vice President of Technology, Jef Gray. “These days, we can use the map to communicate directly with customers on outages, whether a crew is en route, and when their service will be restored.”
When Hurricane Ian set its sights on KUA’s service territory and made landfall on September 28, 2022, as a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 150 mph, it allowed their team to test their new outage map under the most strenuous of conditions. At the height of Ian’s impact, 15,000 – or 17 percent – of KUA’s 90,000 customers lost power.
Behind every one of those 15,000 outages, there’s a story of a customer adjusting their routine and decision-making process based on how long they expected to be without power. Whether they’re a family of four deciding if they should go to a relative’s home or someone alone waiting to hear from loved ones who may have been affected by the storm, the impacts of power outages are often personal.
Leveraging outage data from their outage map powered by The DataCapable Platform, KUA line crews and support personnel moved quickly to assess the damage and restore service to customers when it was safe to do so. By the following day, September 29, KUA was able to restore power to more than 90 percent of its customers.
The Results
Every storm has a story, and every power outage has an impact. Hurricane Ian’s $112 billion path of destruction left millions affected in its wake.
Thanks to KUA’s keen insight into what critical information customers need to know in a storm, they were able to ensure customers were kept in the loop throughout the worst hurricane to impact Florida in the state’s history.
By providing access to a visual gateway featuring real-time information and restoration updates, KUA helped prevent outage events experienced throughout its most recent hurricane season from evolving into communications crises.
“During outage times, access to electricity drives key decision-making for every customer and family,” said Gray “We live in an age where customers can track a pizza online; it’s reasonable that they should also have the latest restoration details from their electric utility.”