BENECO is tech up with its digital link with NEA dashboard
By Laarni Sibayan
The Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) technical system is now ready to be connected to the National Electrification Administration’s (NEA) Digital Dashboard Command Center (DDCC).
Representatives from the NEA that held a close-up technical meeting with BENECO on Monday gave a thumbs up for the electric cooperative’s readiness to be hooked with the dashboard, indicating that NEA made a right choice in selecting BENECO as the pilot cooperative for the project.
The NEA team bared this evaluation in an exit interview today with the BENECO team led by Melchor Licoben, general manager, and the management information and communications systems (MICS) office and the special equipment and metering office (SEMO) of the network services department.
“Now that we got all the architecture and processes in place, we will now focus on the data and make sure that the right data is fed into the system. We are closely coordinating with the Office of the Performance Assessment to make sure that all data are official,” Mel Locsin of NEA said.
Locsin demonstrated to the BENECO team the live and real-time connection of the co-op’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). This key feature was called by Locsin as the “SCADA Live.” The SCADA is the heart of BENECO’s operations.
He walked the team through the salient and key features of the DDCC while on live hook-up with the NEA Command Center.
“This is more than just a dashboard. It is actually a Performance Management Data Base (PMDB). So eventually pwede ma build up yan. You (ECs) can do data analytics and Predictive Analysis eventually. Kaya napag usapan din namin while we were looking at the data yesterday, what is important to flow in, and eventually available data for analysis,” he said.
Impressed with the data analytics strength of the Digital DashBoard and future possibilities of improving the systems of BENECO from the learnings his team got from closely collaborating with the NEA IT team, Licoben expressed his appreciation to NEA for choosing BENECO as a pilot EC.
“Maganda sir, ang ganda! We truly appreciate na pinili kami ni NEA . While we are sharing data, we are also learning,” Licoben said.
“Ang dami rin naming natutunan sir. Excited na rin kami na idevelop ang dashboard natin,” Paul Donaal, MICS supervisor said.
Donaal and Mario Calatan, SEMO supervisor, were the key officers who worked closely with the NEA team.
Other features of the digital base are the Geographical Information System (GIS) Map classification color coding, display data of the EC key performance indicators at a summary level, and financial, technical, and institutional data.
The hook-up will feature an alarm message board that will be receiving data directly from BENECOs (ECs) SCADA system.
Locsin said there will be alarms that will be fed on the dashboard similar to airport dashboards that scroll down as new messages come in and will be continuously displayed, Locsin added.
Alarms on outages during disasters will also be seen at the NEA Command Center in Quezon City following the interface of BENECO’s Outage Management System.
The success will be used to launch the project for all ECs in the country, Locsin said, adding that upon the completion of connectivity of all 121 ECs in the country, the NEA can have access at its fingertips to the conditions of the ECs nationwide.
“You are first since you already have systems in place,” Locsin told BENECO. ***LSI
