Upgrade and Expand Snohomish PUD’s Energy and Distribution

Snohomish PUD is the second largest public utility in the Pacific Northwest and the 12th largest in the U.S. serving over 335,000 customers and covering over 2,200 square miles in Snohomish County and Camano Island, Washington. The upgrade and expansion of the energy and distribution management system are part of Snohomish PUD’s Smart Grid Program. This program is aimed at reducing operations and maintenance costs over time, while improving distribution system reliability.

The new OMS will be integrated with the existing Alstom-provided Distribution Management System (DMS). Together with the upgrade to its Alstom-provided Energy Management System (EMS) this will provide Snohomish PUD with an integrated single user interface. This interface will be used across the PUD’s transmission and distribution control rooms, bringing added consistency across applications. It will also make the system easier to use, maintain and train on, as well as enabling enhanced situational awareness, especially for network restoration from outages.

Snohomish PUD has been using Alstom’s EMS based on its e-terraplatform software suite since 2009, to monitor and control its transmission network. The upgrade will offer operational efficiency improvements and the configuration design will enable Snohomish PUD to take advantage of National Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) best practices for improved system and cyber security.

Alstom successfully implemented its DMS based on its e-terradistribution technology at Snohomish PUD in August, 2013. In Q1 2105, the PUD approved moving forward with Alstom’s OMS. This kicked off the next phase of fully deploying a single, integrated platform to monitor and operate the PUD’s electric grid, enabling further integration of Information and Operations Technology across the enterprise.

“Snohomish PUD is keeping pace with available technology for a modern, integrated electricity grid by working with Alstom across our transmission and distribution control rooms. A single software platform will enable ease of integration, more efficient operator training and an overall lower cost of ownership,” said Chris Hiemgartner, Assistant General Manager, Distribution & Engineering Services at Snohomish PUD.

“We are extremely proud Snohomish PUD has chosen Alstom technology for advancing their smart grid control rooms and we are especially eager to integrate our latest OMS capabilities enabling faster and better decision making and information sharing during outage restoration scenarios,” said Karim El Naggar, Vice President, Network Management Solutions, Alstom Grid.