Lanka Electricity Company (Private) Limited (LECO) unveiled three of their in-house developed prime initiatives, the MYLECO App, Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) and SMART grid Integration Platform (SMIP) yesterday in Colombo in the presence of Minister of Power, Energy and Business Development, Ravi Karunanayake at the ‘LECO Switch On Future’ event.
Outsourcing software products to meet the industry processes has become a challenge over the years specially creating integration and customization issues, General Manager, LECO, H.N. Gunasekera said. Today LECO is taking forefront in the utility digitalization, introducing various innovative solutions in converting the national grid to a smart grid.
Anyhow, LECO does not believe that this mission can be achieved by imported solutions. Therefore, LECO, in line with the government policy in converting the power system to a SMART grid, has developed in house digital solutions to infuse automation to its distribution system, system operation and customer services.
“We have outsourced and in-house built software and a central database that contains data entered by customers and our fellow staff members thus presenting a more reliable and effective service,” he said.
Gunasekara also added that in 1984, LECO designed its first database which contained data of 14,000 customers and in 1985 they switched in to the use of mainframe computers. In 2000, LECO shifted to networking with the development of customer resource centers and furthermore outsourced an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and a billing system in 2002.
“We also have a Geographic Information System (GIS) with a database containing data on each and every distribution point in our network which we update frequently,” he said.
In 2011 the outsourced billing system was taken under the control of the LECO management to avoid integration and customization issues. Thus LECO has taken a frontier in innovative technology from its inception by introducing bundled conductors, pre stressed lattice poles etc. to the distribution engineering as well as customer solutions such as spot billing, spot estimates and bill collection centers.
Initiated in 1983 to meet the increasing demand of electricity consumption with the urbanization of areas around Colombo, the company is a bench-mark utility in the South Asian region for its achievements in energy loss control, distribution system management, operation and customer services.
The introduction of MYLECO App enables access to a myriad of customer services including access to consumption details, account details, power outages, on-line bill settlements by accessing to customer’s respective bank account and repair services. The app enables LECO customers to interact with them in real time.
The Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) is introduced to control, supervise and service the network. This ADMS establishes communication with the instruments installed across the network such as automatic switches, measurement devices and smart meters to collect large amount of data. These data is analyzed although an artificial intelligent system to provided information to the network operators. The ADMS has the facility to integrate the LECO Distribution Control Centre, Call Centre and the Customer Services Centers in to a single platform enabling all the staff related to customer services, operations and operations to have a single interactive platform to work on. This enables all officers to observe the status of the system, the geographic areas of outages and the rectification action.
The SMART grid integration platform (SMIP) enables the integration of smart grid equipment to a unified platform in online data acquisition and controls. This enables publishing advanced customer solutions such as prepaid billing, on line monitoring of power consumption and access to customers to monitor their energy usage seamlessly and scalably.
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