AREA continues to refine online outage management system

Hurricane Matthew provided AREA with a real-time test of the new web-based outage management system.

The Cooperative Mutual Aid Assistance Site allows statewides to deploy and track crews in the wake of a storm. The site is accessible to the co-ops who are requesting help; it allows co-op managers to see where the help will be coming from, and how many crews. On the other end, it allows the co-ops who are sending assistance to see what other co-ops are sending help, and to get an idea of the scale of the response.

Mike Temple, director of education and training at AREA, has so far trained seven Alabama co-ops on how to use the site, with plans to train the remaining co-ops in the next several months. Plans are in the works to host a meeting at AREA this fall with other statewide coordinators to continue to make refinements to the system.

AREA is also strongly encouraging other statewides to use the system.