LOAD SHEDDING BLUES – HOW WE MAKE THEM ROCK AND ROLL!!!

WatchManager has released its latest software version (Ver 7.60 build 396) which includes amongst many enhancements, a revamped “Storm Mode” function.  Yes, climate change has meant more frequent storm-type disruptions that cause havoc in monitoring and response company’s control rooms, but the biggest headache and requirement now, is to manage our ever-worsening electricity load shedding problem!

Despite there being supposed ‘schedules’ for power downtime, they change frequently, are regularly extended without warning, and of course unexpected failures occur due to equipment malfunctions.  So how exactly can your control room manage this?

We have now included an automatic outage recognition function that can be set to monitor areas and event types, so that when the set threshold is reached (say 10 mains fails in 10 seconds), the system automatically puts those areas into Storm Mode and manages the mad rush of offending signals accordingly – like automatically putting them onto a Hold Stack, filing them to the client’s history file, and not sending wasted and expensive SMSs to tell them something that they already know.  Naturally, there will be clients that will need to be responded to in these situations regardless of load shedding, and they can be marked as exceptions to these rules.

Feedback from many clients has been nothing less than great satisfaction and relief at how this upgrade has made control room life so much easier during these difficult and frustrating times.

This new feature is available to all clients whose annual licence fees are paid up and current or those whose RMS service is current.