Alabama Powers Back Up

Utilities try to learn from past experiences. For Alabama Power, an operating company of Southern Co., the lessons learned from past Gulf hurricanes, including Dennis and Ivan, laid the groundwork for its response to Katrina. While the state didn't face the kind of death and devastation of Louisiana and Mississippi, Alabama Power needed to restore services to 636,891 customers who lost power. By the morning of Sept. 1, around 210,000 people in the company's service area still were without power. The utility created eight staging areas in fields or department-store parking lots to work with five permanent Alabama Power facilities to restore service.

One of the key software applications developed by Alabama Power's IT staff is helping manage the dispatching and logistics of people and trucks, including about 3,200 workers sent from other utilities around the country, plus 2,600 Alabama Power staff. "During major disasters like Katrina, our operations are much more decentralized," says Bill Mintz, power-delivery message and systems manager at Alabama Power. "IT lets us run our apps electronically at our staging areas where the outages are, and satellite communications let us have timelier sharing of information with the multiple outside sources helping us."

IT and operations people worked ahead of the storm to try to anticipate the damage and the needed response. "We help them tie facilities, the [geographical information system], and weather together to see how many facilities are likely to be exposed to wind," CIO Julia Segars says. "Together we got that data to our storm operators, who planned on the amount of outside help we needed before the storm hit."

Photo courtesy of Reuters

--Martin J. Garvey