Case Study: We Energies reduces outage durations with SEL fault indicators

Reducing Customer Outage Duration at We Energies

We Energies, a utility serving 1.1 million electric customers in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, wanted to improve customer satisfaction by reducing outage duration. Although its reliability rankings were already strong, its CAIDI in 2003 was 125 minutes, and the company set a goal of first-quartile CAIDI performance without hurting its excellent SAIFI and SAIDI results. Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) was brought in with SEL LINAM faulted circuit indicators to help speed fault location and restoration.

SEL worked with We Energies to define strict application standards, train field and operations staff, and install electrostatic reset fault indicators on the feeders with the highest customer minutes of interruption. The utility integrated fault indicator target data into its outage management and dispatch processes, enabling crews to restore unaffected portions of a feeder before finding the exact fault. By 2005, We Energies achieved its 25% CAIDI reduction goal, and outage durations for customers dropped by an average of 30 minutes when outages occurred.

We Energies

Allen F. Marifke

Senior Engineer