New Portal System to Improve Georgia EMC Capabilities

August 3, 2006

A new portal system created by Abel Solutions, Inc. for Georgia System Operations Corp (GSOC), will give Electric Member Cooperatives (EMCs) the ability to monitor and manage power distribution paths and trends in real time, as well as in a historical format. This will allow GSOC’s member corporations to improve their ability to perform analyses and plan for capacity. It also will enable EMCs to proactively detect issues in their systems -- before they become expensive equipment failures.

The new system, based on Microsoft's SharePoint application, will be created using Abel Solutions’ proven FastPortal methodology along with RtWebParts provided by OSISoft Inc. Using this approach, most projects can go from initial project roadmap to portal implementation in approximately two months, as compared to other approaches which typically take twice as long, or longer.

GSOC Senior ECS PI Engineer, Jeff Southern, says, The new system will give our members substantial savings by enabling them to take a proactive approach to their power systems and possibly prevent failures that could cause lengthy outage times and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.. If a problem can be detected and corrected before it causes a failure, you can see how this system could help our members save money and keep their energy consumers satisfied by minimizing outage frequency and duration.

Currently, the GSOC Energy Control Systems (ECS) group manages data collected from field devices (i.e.Generation Plants, Substations, etc.) in the company's Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) energy management application. As an added service, the ECS group has provided rapid, historical reports to EMCs and other service providers within the Oglethorpe family of companies on how and where power is distributed to millions of Georgia residents.

One of the exciting things about the new system is that it will give EMCs real-time access to data directly from multiple GSOC applications, explains Abel Solutions practice area principal, David Hammond. In other words, with no changes to these existing applications, we’ll eliminate the need for custom reports. The EMCs will get the information they need, when they need it. And time that GSOC staff used to spend creating reports can be allocated to other, mission-critical tasks.

Abel Solutions, Inc.

Abel Solutions employs innovative technology to increase the productivity of businesses by making the right information available to the right people at the right time. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Information Worker and Integrated E-Business Solutions, Abel Solutions is widely recognized for their SharePoint-based solutions, custom application development and innovative delivery methodology. Abel Solutions has been delivering custom solutions for businesses, state and local government and non-profit organizations since 1997.