Dive Brief:
- Smart grid technologies are expected to drive global outage management system (OMS) market growth from its current $929.4 million to $1.3 billion by 2023, according to Navigant Research.
- Smart grid technologies will drive major changes in outage and restoration systems, allowing them to handle and process the immense amount of new data available from smart meters. Information technology will make outage management systems more efficient at detecting outages and restoring power. It will also allow OMS to predict and prevent outages, Navigant concluded.
- Utilities have only just begun to use advanced distribution management systems (ADMS) to improve their operations and efficiency and have not yet joined them to the potential of OMSs because of the cost and complexity of the new technologies. But pressure from regulators following the thousands of outages during 2012’s Hurricane Sandy has caused 64% of utilities to prioritize streamlined restoration capability.
Dive Insight:
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) just launched of a smart OMS with an integrated Geographic Information System (GIS) designed to speed the detecting and restoring of outages. The SDG&E system’s situational awareness of the entire distribution system allows immediate detection of and action on outages. The system can also track and respond to multiple outages.
Utilities are expected to invest nearly $107 billion in synchrophasors and wider-area situational awareness systems between 2014 and 2023, according to Navigant.
The biggest portion of the spending on OMS will come from the Asia Pacific market, with significant portions of the spending also coming from Europe and North America, Navigant reported.
An increasing need by utilities to engage with and respond to customers is one of Navigant’s top ten trends in the smart grid sector for 2015. It is a trend that will necessitate the kind of real time response to outages that OMS allows.
