Neoenergia has started the activities of the new Integrated Operations Center (IOC) in its distribution center in Bahia. The project centralizes Neoenergia Coelba's technical assistance, ensuring the same service standard to all incidents generated. In addition to operational integration, IOC adds more technology for power grid monitoring and customer service efficiency. The R$ 6-million investment has enabled the gathering in 770m² of state-of-the-art technology used in large metropolises.
One of the new IOC's innovations is the unified system, which allows real time assessment of the energy grid that crosses the state, and which is projected on a 14x2 m² video wall, plus 28 55'' monitors, on the top floor of one of Neoenergia Coelba's headquarters buildings, in Salvador.
As a support for monitoring, the company has also revamped its field performance model, which relies on a new territorial division, based on locations. There are 45 territorial distribution units (TDUs), covering 415 municipalities in the company's concession area. Demand management in the new IOC is performed by a proprietary technology, developed by the company's employees, called Tableau.
The system ensures that incidents are continuously assessed in relation to the service capacity of the system's controllers. This allows them to focus on supervising the region for which they are responsible, monitoring, and readiness for any intervention. More than 2,100 field and administrative professionals work in three different shifts for 24/7 service.
“In this new IOC, we have unified our operation and management of the electric system. Thus, we enable more reliability in energy supply to people from Bahia, who are assured of having the same service, anywhere in the state," says Luiz Antonio Ciarlini, Neoenergia Coelba's CEO.
In addition, the company's operational intelligence is gathered in a single location, ensuring more efficiency in decision making. "This allows for a faster response to incidents, and as a result, a shorter interruption of service to the public, if any," says Neoenergia Coelba's operations manager, Adriano Barros.
As part of crisis management, IOC has a mirror structure, with the same technologies, at a different location in the state which is kept confidential. This structure can be used in case of interventions in the main base. Thus, the information and control of the energy supply in Bahia is always safe.
Energy network automation
All the technologies used in the operation can be handled with the new IOC. This is the case with self-healing, used for automation procedures in the energy network, and which allows the resumption of energy supply in an interrupted area in no more than 15 seconds. Upon detecting an interference, which can be caused by falling trees, weather effects, or animals, self-healing automatically isolates the affected region and reconnects the network through a different path, ensuring the immediate return of supply.
In situations where no self-healing is available, customers must wait for the system to be restored through the intervention of a technical team on the site. Automation using this technology allows that the lowest number of customers are impacted by an outage event. This and other technologies used by Neoenergia are now connected to IOC's integrated system and contribute to a faster and safer service to customers.