E&O Version 24.1 Released

Tools to Assist with Storm Mutual Aid

Milsoft is excited to announce a brand-new product that will assist utilities and statewide organizations with the distribution of Mutual Aid resources during large events.  A simple, web-based platform allows utilities to request assistance by submitting how many of each type of crew they need.  Utilities providing assistance can define the employees and vehicles that can help others and a coordinator can handle the assignment of available resources to the utilities that need it.  The best part is that this system is designed to work independently of any Outage Management or Work Force Management software system. This new system is currently being tested, and we expect it to be available later this year.  If you or your statewide organization are interested in learning more and seeing a demo of this new system, please email sales@milsoft.com.

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Bing Maps Changes

If you are a user of Streaming Landbase, then you are using Bing Maps in WindMil or DisSPatch.  Last month, we were notified that Microsoft would be deprecating the Bing Maps product and moving to the new Azure Maps platform.  This change will occur in June 2025, so there is no immediate impact.  Milsoft is working on the necessary updates to our products so this change will be seamless for you.  We anticipate this being complete and part of the 24.2 release in late 2024, well before the June 2025 cutoff for Bing Maps. If you have any questions on this, please contact product support.

FieldSyte Mobile Solutions Adds Staking to Lineup 

Last year, FieldSyte provided operations personnel with a powerful tool for working outages in the field. This year, FieldSyte Electric Projects for performing staking was released and was featured at our 2024 Users Conference. With the ever-expanding role of mobile field solutions, Milsoft found it necessary to add a FieldSyte as a stand-alone session track to its Users Conference. We are also looking for FieldSyte advisory board members, so please apply if you want to be part of this exciting and rapidly developing technology. If you’ve not had a chance to review our staking solution, feel free to review new literature or video content at your leisure.

Industry News

Milsoft has integrated with ODIN to support government efforts at making outage data available to all utilities. The Outage Data Initiative Nationwide (ODIN) is a network of leading electric service providers who are committed to providing comprehensive interoperable power outage data that enables utilities and others to exchange data freely with designated stakeholders at all levels — helping restoration, risk mitigation, emergency response, and more.

Currently covering over 45 million customers across the United States, ODIN partners include investor-owned utilities, cooperatives, and municipalities of all sizes. With cross-industry support from vendors like Milsoft, electric utilities can participate in ODIN in as little as 30 minutes!

There is no cost to participate, and the ODIN team provides technical support for implementation at no charge. To learn more click here. There’s also an ODIN Webinar that you can watch here.

2024 Milsoft Training Dates

DisSPatch/OMS
Nov 05, 2024 to Nov 07, 2024
Dallas, TX

Dec 10, 2024 to Dec 12, 2024
Online via GTM

LightTable Coordination and Arc Flash
Dec 09, 2024 to Dec 13, 2024
Online via GTM

Milsoft Model Editing
Aug 12, 2024 to Aug 13, 2024
Savannah, GA

Nov 11, 2024 to Nov 12, 2024
Dallas, TX

WindMil Advanced
Aug 27, 2024 to Aug 29, 2024
Savannah, GA

WindMil Basic Analysis
Aug 14, 2024 to Aug 15, 2024
Savannah, GA

Nov 13, 2024 to Nov 14, 2024
Dallas, TX

2025 Milsoft Users Conference
June 3-5
Nashville, TN

Off the Clock: Sharla Milliorn

Sharla Milliorn, our dynamic Director of Corporate Events, has been a cornerstone of Milsoft for 23 amazing years. When she’s not orchestrating top-notch Users Conferences and officially kicking it off with an a capella rendition of the national anthem, she also manages 60+ annual events. Sharla’s life is filled with family, music, and faith. She treasures time with her family and three grandchildren, loves singing gospel music, and works cows with her husband Gary. Sharla also leads young adult marriage classes at her church. We’re incredibly proud to have her on our team!

Want to share an “Off the Clock” story with us?
We’d love to share it!
Send your story and picture to christy.fayard@milsoft.com.

What’s Cooking?

Our focus has always been on you, our customer!

Milsoft understands the value of making your user experience rewarding and beneficial. There are many choices in today’s marketplace, and we do not take your patronage for granted. We relish opportunities to listen to you and respond with highly competent support services, 24x7x365 while working equally as hard to be proactive in developing solutions that meet your needs.

Increasing satisfaction is our goal. It’s a continuous process, and to do this well, especially in today’s environment, we must be listening to and reacting positively to our customers and seeking every single day to provide a better customer experience.

Please do not hesitate to call or email me directly. I’d love to hear from you.

Ed Carlson
Director, Customer Experience
ed.carlson@milsoft.com
(325) 513-2609

Product News

Version 23 is Coming Soon!

We are in the testing phase for Version 23 of Core E&O. With the release of this new version, we will be providing webinars for each product line to go over enhancement details and relevant changes. Keep an eye on your inbox for upcoming product webinars for version 23.

PV and Inverter Modeling

Version 23 will contain a new add-on module to allow for the detailed modeling of Solar Arrays and Inverters. A new element type, inverter control settings, and detailed calculators for modeling panels and arrays for calculations of AC output are included. This is just the start of development plans for PV, Inverters, DER, Battery Storage, and Electric Vehicle Chargers, which will all eventually be included in this new module.

Planned Outage Tools

Several new OMS features will be included in the upcoming version 23 release. These include a new Planned Outage toolset. This will allow users to identify devices where planned work is taking place, notify customers of upcoming planned outages, and displaying of planned outage areas on your public web outage viewer. More details will be provided in the product webinars accompanying the release.

Cash Drawer Credit Card Payments

Development has been completed on an enhancement to Cash Drawer that will allow Credit Card Payments to be processed through Invoice Cloud! The CSR may also store the payment method for future use or enroll the account in AutoPay, Pay by Text, or Paperless Billing when completing the transaction.

Save the Date!

TechAdvantage 2023 Expo — Booth 1125
March 6-8
Music City Center — Nashville, TN
(click here to sign up for a FieldSyte in-person demo at Tech Advantage)

2023 IEEE REPC
April 25-28
Cleveland Marriott at Key Tower — Cleveland, OH

Register for IEEE REPC

MILSOFT USERS CONFERENCE

June 13 – 15, 2023

Omni Ft. Worth — Ft. Worth, TX

Register for Milsoft UC

Off the Clock

When Jeff Kirkes, Milsoft Engineering Trainer and long-time customer support and advocate champion, is not helping customers, you can see Jeff at the race track. Jeff brings the same kind of passion he has for engineering software to the building and racing of high-performance race cars. If there’s anything you’d like to know about high automotive performance, Jeff’s your man, and just like his support, he’s available, so don’t be shy. You can contact Jeff at jeff.kirkes@milsoft.com to carve out some time to chat.

Want to share an “Off the Clock” story with us? We’d love to share it! Send your story and picture to christy.fayard@milsoft.com.

Milsoft is proud to announce the release of quarterly newsletters. Our mission will be to keep customers informed about what’s going on at Milsoft and to share any relevant news that could benefit our community of amazing customers.

A Special Thank You

Advisory Board Results

The Milsoft Advisory Board comprises seven product teams of five board members in each. Each product team’s mission is to advocate for their product lines by giving a user’s perspective on development and training needs. While our support teams are ready, willing, and able to answer any questions, feel free to also reach out to your respective board members11 for any input you may have.

Support Corner

New Licensing System Kicks USB Keys to the Curb

With the release of versions 21 and 22, Milsoft migrated from USB modules to a soft license system. This new system still gives you all the functionality you had with USB keys with some added benefits. You only need to install the server license on a single machine and it can be shared between users.

There is also a new administrative tool that allows you to see who has which licenses in use. Don’t hesitate to contact support if you have questions about licensing or how to set it up.

Rename Switchgear Cabinets

If you use the Switchgear elements in the model, you may have noticed that the cabinet numbers were hard coded in past versions. You can now click on a cabinet in recent releases and change the cabinet name.

This will allow you to match the field to the map, so everyone sees consistent data regarding your switchgear cabinets. To edit the names, double-click on the switchgear symbol, and you will see a field to edit the cabinet name.

Product News

DTN Weather integration in OMS

Now available in version 22.1, users can purchase an add-on module to display weather layers directly in the DisSPatch OMS client. The service includes weather layers for Satellite, Radar, Lightning Strikes, NWS Watches and Warnings, and Tropical Storm path projections. Contact your Regional Account Manager to see a demo or get pricing information.

Migration to Iron Mountain complete

The Communications Team has been working hard this year, migrating our hosted IVR system to an entirely new facility with Iron Mountain. This move will give us access to more resources and provide better backup, redundancy, and recovery abilities when needed.

iXp 22 Release Highlights

With the release of iXp22 and its new look, the financial and work management group is excited about the following new features:

• The new Accounts Payable check number editing allows you to edit check numbers entered in the system with the wrong check number.
• Added the ability to download the Payroll and Accounts Payable direct deposits from the screen vs. creating a file transfer to extract the data.
• The ability to designate a work order to close from the “Transaction Detail” screen and remove it from the designated to close list!!
• New audit logs were added to General Ledger.

Have you seen Milsoft FieldSyte?

It’s hard to believe it’s already been over a year since the first release of FieldSyte. Our collaboration with Reavis Code has successfully provided a feature-rich, robust map viewer with what seems like endless capabilities.

In that short time, we are rapidly approaching  50 sites deployed with the FieldSyte solution and have lots more in the queue. Whether you want a simple map viewer or a robust outage management tool, the modular-based approach allows you to build out the exact toolset you want. What’s next for FieldSyte? We are already deploying beta sites with our new electric projects module, which allows you to perform field staking directly in the FieldSyte application and seamlessly integrate those jobs back into WindMilMap.

Coming Soon!

We have some really exciting things in the works for our first release of 2023, including Solar/PV modeling, a new Crew Manager toolset, Planned Outage tools, FieldSyte Staking, and a new customer-facing app for iXp users.

Save the Date!

Distributech — Booth 5119
February 7-9, 2023
San Diego Convention Center — San Diego, CA

TechAdvantage 2023 Expo — Booth 1125
March 6-8
Music City Center — Nashville, TN.

Off the Clock

Making time for the things we love helps balance things out. Pictured here, Brad Fjelsta of Cooperative Response Center and Brian Lassiter of Milsoft are seen with a pair of beautiful Redfish caught in Tampa Bay, FL. Both guys used Live Greenbacks for bait with a 15lb test line to catch these beauties.

Want to share an “Off the Clock” story with us? We’d love to share it! Send your story and picture to christy.fayard@milsoft.com.

Energy is a major component of the United States’ economy. According to the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Studies, “the U.S. spent $1.2 trillion on energy, or 5.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)” in 2019. While that’s no small amount of what the U.S. produces, the somewhat surprising news is that energy consumption is projected to decline in the coming decades. By 2050, energy per capita is expected to decline below 300 million BTUs per capita, a dip beneath current usage statistics. The U.S. Energy Information Administration attributes this demand to increasing energy efficiency, stating, “U.S. energy consumption grows at a slower rate than gross domestic product through 2050 as U.S. energy efficiency continues to increase.”

This poses a challenge for public utilities. While energy efficiency is a stated policy goal, the achievement of it seems to shrink utilities’ revenue prospects. How can utilities continue to grow even as consumers and companies alike consume less energy? In this article, we will seek to answer that question.

Satisfying today’s energy consumer

It’s easy to see declining energy consumption as an inevitability, but a fatalistic attitude toward the changing competitive landscape obscures a key insight: Efficiency cuts both ways. It can cut a utility’s revenue if not carefully managed — and it can also grow it. How? Consider the following.

A standard unit of power measurement is a quad, which is defined as a quadrillion BTUs. Utilities can imagine what exactly a quad is by using a number of different practical measures, such as the fact that it equals 293,071,000,000 kilowatt-hours or 970,434,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas or 8,007,000,000 gallons of gasoline. Visual Capitalist notes, “A quad is a massive unit that only is useful in measuring something like national energy consumption.” What’s also noticeable is that “a whopping 68% of all energy is actually rejected energy, or energy that gets wasted through various inefficiencies.” And that statistic appears even more stark when broken down by sector. The residential sector only enjoys a 65 percent end-use efficiency with 3.75 quads of wasted energy, while the commercial sector also has a 65 percent end-use efficiency with 3.15 quads wasted.

Utilities often focus on the revenue lost due to greater energy efficiency, but increased efficiency represents an opportunity to please customers. Utilities don’t want to deliver power that isn’t used, and customers don’t want to pay for wasted energy. Utilities can help satisfy today’s energy customer by helping to educate them as to how they can save money by using energy more efficiently. They can also employ efficiency tools such as time-of-use billing, which allows utilities to leverage smart metering in order to set usage-adjusted rates. Added benefits such as discounted days and “free” off-peak periods help keep customers happy and leverage efficiencies to benefit utilities, decreasing expenses and increasing income.

Another way to please customers while helping utilities involves implementing prepaid billing. This option reduces expenses such as collections and many standard billing costs. Passing some of that savings on to customers benefits both parties.

Diversifying utility asset bases

Energy efficiency — meaning the maximally productive use of energy — isn’t the only way for utilities to reduce expenses. They can maximize income (and sometimes every realize strategic growth) by diversifying their utility asset bases.

Everyone is familiar with the four largest generators of American energy: petroleum, natural gas, coal, and nuclear. Much has been made about the death of coal, and natural gas has suffered more modest declines, while petroleum and nuclear energy have enjoyed only marginal increases. However, almost all of the smaller alternative energy sources have enjoyed healthy to dramatic growth. These include:

• Biomass
• Hydro
• Wind
• Solar

Only geothermal, which is the least used of all energy sources, saw a decline.

Distributing energy generation across multiple asset bases offers several growth opportunities for utilities. Naturally, these opportunities will vary from state to state since some states restrict utility asset ownership. However, in contexts where it is allowed, asset investment can lead to the development of a vertically integrated utility, which greatly reduces operating costs. States that have renewable energy targets may offer various kinds of incentives to encourage their development, including utility ownership of assets. These assets can include technologies that consumers would typically own, such as rooftop solar arrays, which can lead to rate recovery without a substantial capital investment.

Other benefits include:

• Diversifying the utility’s asset portfolio
• Decentralizing energy production, which protects against economic shocks
• Developing expertise in a new energy technology field
• Shoring up strategic vulnerabilities in an existing grid by introducing new technologies at key points

Value-added services

Value-added services are generally defined as optional utility services that a customer may elect for additional benefits, services whose costs are only borne by those specific individuals and not the entire customer base. Value-added services have a number of benefits over traditional utility services. They can use extant marketing channels, greatly reducing communication costs. The same holds true for IT resources and back-channel systems, which can engage with value-added services at minimal cost. Finally, utilities have a unique position to offer specialized value-added services such as electric vehicle charging stations, backup microgrids that can continue to function for specific customers during catastrophes or unexpected grid failure, and solar panels for rural areas.

These value-added services can expand in multiple ways, and two of the most promising are through online marketplaces and smart homes.

Online marketplaces

Web-based marketplaces such as Amazon, Yelp, and eBay achieve revenue growth not primarily through creating and selling their own products, but by connecting interested consumers with third-parties who have applicable goods. While not every online marketplace has proved successful in its mission, they have still led a retail revolution that has transformed what it means to buy and sell — and there’s no reason why utilities can’t join them.

Power-related products applicable to both residential and commercial clients abound. Everyone could benefit if utilities could connect customers with reputable third parties who offer goods that might benefit them. The challenge lies primarily in quality control and avoiding the impression of a conflict of interest on utilities’ parts.

Smart homes

Speaking of energy-related goods, utilities can also implement value-added services that related to the internet of things (IOT) offerings that increasingly appear in modern smart homes, benefits such as surge protection for expensive appliances. Smart homes, though, can benefit utilities in less immediately obvious ways. The use of smart metering on a utility’s side and the wealth of data generated by smart homes means that energy providers will one day be able to determine who is in a property, when peak energy usage occurs, and how to best manage the grid to avoid blackouts or brownouts. Utility efficiency increases even as customer satisfaction also grows.

An engineering-focused company that understands how to best benefit all kinds of utilities, Milsoft offers multiple services, such as outage management, enterprise accounting, GIS modeling and analytics, hosted interactive voice response, and automated customer services. Contact us today to learn how we can help your utility grow!