The supply and demand of lineman minutes
by Simon Morris
It’s interesting how successful electric utilities have to deal with a couple of laws that have nothing to do with regulatory mandates.
The laws of physics dictate that at any time, the amount of kilowatt hours of electricity produced must equal the amount of kilowatt hours consumed. As the demand for electricity fluctuates throughout the day, utilities must adjust the amount of power they generate. Failure to do so can result in outages or costly purchases of power from other sources.
The laws of economics dictate that to get the most efficiency from their workforces, electric utilities must balance existing lineman resources with demand for their services. More specifically, electric companies must balance the available time linemen can spend on projects such as installation, construction, maintenance and repairs and the number of minutes required to complete those projects. Failure to balance lineman availability and demand can result in overtime, scheduling issues, productivity loss, customer dissatisfaction and even decreased revenue.
Electric companies have spent millions of dollars and invested countless hours developing a system of interlocking technologies, business models and supervisory processes that enables them to automatically and manually balance the supply and demand of kilowatt hours. But the industry as a whole has not applied the same focus or effort to balancing the supply and demand of lineman minutes. While most electric utilities have systems in place to ensure field technicians respond quickly to a downed power line, few have systems in place to accurately forecast demand for lineman minutes months or even years in advance.
By drawing on the lessons learned from balancing kilowatt hour supply and demand, electric companies can map out strategies for balancing lineman minutes to more efficiently manage their field workforce. Doing so will help them increase efficiency, boost productivity, reduce costs and increase revenues. There are similarities between the forces that affect kilowatt hours and lineman minutes and utilities can effectively manage their workforces based on future demand.
Understanding marginal costs
Every electric utility is familiar with marginal costs-the cost of producing one more kilowatt hour. As demand rises through the day, power companies often have to increase the output of higher-cost plants, or bring in the power via more expensive transmission lines. This means that generation of electricity production now becomes more expensive for each additional kilowatt-hour, ultimately reducing profit.
Similarly, electric utilities should view lineman minutes in terms of marginal costs. Companies set the size, composition and location of their workforce according to the predicted amount of work required, taking into account planned work as well as some estimate of unplanned work. If a utility has a higher workload than the predicted value, it would need its employees to work overtime. Conversely, having more linemen on the clock than the demand requires means the utility is not efficiently managing its workforce and cutting into profits. The result? It ultimately pays more for each minute its linemen are on the job. In essence, lineman minutes are a “use it or lose it” commodity.
Fast, efficient response to emergency situations also affects the balance of supply and demand for kilowatt hours and lineman minutes. If a power line goes down and there’s no alternative power line supplying the affected area, demand drops immediately. Just as immediately, technicians have to throw switches to reduce and/or reroute power flowing into the grid. This balances power production and power consumption.
However, a downed power line requires immediate on-site attention. Some linemen must stop whatever task they’re performing and focus on the problem. Dedicating the right amount of field technicians to fix the power line restores the balance between supply and demand of lineman minutes and ensures the problem gets fixed quickly. But it also forces managers to re-adjust technicians’ schedules.
Both decisions-how to reroute power and which linemen to reassign-are far from trivial, and finding the best answer quickly requires sophisticated processes, training and technology.
To balance supply and demand for lineman minutes, utilities can borrow from their expertise in kilowatt hour demand forecasting. Accurate forecasting is a crucial step toward ensuring the right amount of kilowatt hours and lineman minutes are available as the corresponding demand varies throughout the day, week, month, year and even decade. Two of the most effective approaches for striking these balances are to match future supply to future demand, and to match future demand to future supply.
From a kilowatt hour perspective, demand forecasting begins with a look at hourly usage and extends to years. Utilities have become adept at predicting daily fluctuations, such as spikes a few hours in advance of industrial manufacturers firing up their machines in the morning or one-day events such as the Super Bowl. Building these plans allows power companies to match the supply to the forecast via a range of actions such as gauging how much production to assign each plant, planning ahead to purchase power from other sources during peak demand and building new plants.
From a lineman minute perspective, utilities can use the same type of forecasting to map human resources to future demand. Predicting workloads for scheduled projects enables companies to temporarily re-allocate skilled staff and hire, train and locate new staff based on projected demand.
Utilities have used a variety of approaches to adjust future demand to future supply of kilowatt hours. These approaches include everything from differential pricing-charging higher prices for peak-load electricity consumption-to price breaks for companies using energy-saving measures and customer education campaigns about energy-efficient solutions.
Similarly, electric companies can regulate demand for linemen minutes by planning construction projects so they don’t coincide with periods of frequent repair and maintenance. For example, a utility in the South might schedule substation construction during the spring so as not to coincide with hurricane season.
Automating the process
While most electric utilities rely on powerful demand forecasting tools to ensure they continue to achieve the right balance of kilowatt hours, they typically haven’t invested the same resources in managing their workforce based on near- and long-term demand. Many use paper-based systems that provide static, one-time views of the current workforce and their schedules. These systems limit how quickly they can react to emergencies and don’t provide an accurate plan for meeting future lineman minute demand.
By automating how they manage their technicians in the field, utilities can ensure they have the right amount of staff with the right skills to meet installation, maintenance and repair demands now and in the future. That balance, along with leveling kilowatt hour capacity and need, gives utilities the best formula to stay competitive in an ever-changing market dictated by the laws of physics, economics and governments.
Author
Simon Morris is the vice president of marketing operations at ClickSoftware. Over the last 10 years, Morris has played a key role in educating the market on the concept of service chain optimization as well as building and developing ClickSoftware’s customer community. Morris currently serves as president of the Association for Service Management International, U.K. chapter, and on the advisory board for Enterprise Mobility Week.
