National Grid's Outage Central shows real-time Power Outages
National Grid has released a new section on their website called Outage Central which provides customers, the media, regulators, and emergency officials with access to detailed outage information. The new solution includes support for outage maps showing both the location of specific outages as well as outage summary information by county and town. The system also allows customers to report outages and lookup current outage status for specific accounts using their National Grid customer self-service logon or a combination of information such as a phone number and the last four digits of their social security number.
The functionality of this solution is provided by iFactor’s Storm Center product. The off the shelf features of Storm Center were configured and integrated with National Grid’s existing CIS and OMS to make this information available to customers throughout the service territory. The implementation, which offers access for customers from each of the states served by National Grid, can be found at the following links:
http://www1.nationalgridus.com/masselectric/stormcenter/ http://www1.nationalgridus.com/niagaramohawk/stormcenter/ http://www1.nationalgridus.com/narragansett/stormcenter/ https://www1.nationalgridus.com/granitestate/stormcenter/The implementation of Storm Center at National Grid was completed by iFactor’s professional services team in collaboration with IT and business experts from National Grid. The project was completed in about 6 months as part of National Grid’s efforts to prepare for the winter storm season.
Hydro One has completed the release of a new outage information solution built on iFactor’s Storm Center product. The new website includes the display of both planned and unplanned outages on an interactive Bing Map. Visitors to the site can see the current status of outages, including information about estimated times and crew assignments. The site also provides access to summary information by county and local municipalities throughout the Hydro One service territory.
Hydro One's Storm Center Implementation Showing Unplanned Outages
The unplanned outages layers allows a customer to quickly see details about outages in their neighborhood.
Hydro One's Storm Center Implementation Showing Planned Outages
The latest release of the Web Maps Connector is now available. This release includes several new enhancements as well as several bug fixes including:
Existing customers can access this new functionality by downloading and installing the latest version. For additional information or assistance, contact the iFactor Help Desk.
Entergy has made their new My Account Anywhere solution available to customers. This new system, which is powered by Notifi, allows customers to subscribe to proactive outage alerts directly from the cell phones using text messages. once registered, the customer will receive alerts about power problem affecting any of their accounts. Users can also report outages using the system by texting the word “OUT” to Entergy’s shortcode.
We just wrapped up our first annual beard competition! The contest, better known as iFEAR (ifactor Facial hair Extravaganza And Regatta), took place at our 2009 holiday party. Participants were required to submit a picture of their clean-shaven face on August 19th, and the pictures were uploaded to our internal website for inspection by all employees. Each photo included a newspaper, magazine, or some other evidence to prove that the shave actually occurred on August 19th.
The beard judging took place on October 17th, giving our facial hair foes about two months to grow their whiskers. iFEAR included four categories: Longest Beard, Most Creative Beard, Most Intimidating Beard, and Scruffiest Beard. The Longest Beard prize was determined based on the actual length of the facial hair at the tip of the chin and along the jawline; the other three categories were decided based on a company vote. All participants received an iFEAR 2009 T-shirt, and each winner selected a favorite charity to receive a $50 donation from iFactor. Please congratulate our courageous beard competitors!
Longest Beard: Greg Cahill - Second Harvest Heartland
Scruffiest Beard: Alfred Sawatzky – Boulder Carriage House
Most Creative Beard: Sebastian Clavijo Suero – Oregon Food Bank
Most Intimidating Beard: Graham Garlick – Heifer International
Honorable mention awards were given to Brad Sileo, Greg Ziolkowski, and Jason Iaccio. While their beards impressed us, they were not strong enough to withstand the hairiness of our winners.
Longest Beard
Scruffiest Beard
Most Intimidating Beard
Beard Creativity
iFEAR Competitors
