What's the most cost-effective way to restore outages using a storm response platform with real-time telemetry?

The most cost-effective way is usually to use the platform to prioritize, dispatch, and verify work in real time so crews spend less time driving, searching, and reworking repairs.

In practice, that means:

1. Use live telemetry to rank outages by impact

   • Restore feeders/customers with the largest load first.
   • Prioritize critical facilities like hospitals, water plants, and emergency services.
   • Group nearby outages into the same work order when possible.

2. Optimize crew dispatch dynamically

   • Send the nearest qualified crew to the highest-priority job.
   • Re-route crews based on updated telemetry, weather, and road conditions.
   • Avoid sending multiple crews to the same location unless the job requires it.

3. Reduce truck rolls with remote verification

   • Confirm fault location, device state, and restoration status remotely before dispatch.
   • Use telemetry to avoid unnecessary site visits or repeat visits.

4. Focus on “largest restoration per action”

   • Restore upstream equipment that returns service to many customers at once.
   • Use switching plans that maximize customers restored per crew hour.

5. Continuously re-optimize as new data arrives

   • Storm conditions change quickly, so the cheapest plan is often the one that is updated every few minutes.
   • Recalculate priorities after each restoration, fault report, or equipment status change.

6. Measure cost against outcomes

   • Track cost per customer restored, cost per MW restored, crew utilization, and average time to restoration.
   • Use those metrics to refine dispatch rules after each storm.

If you want, I can also give you a step-by-step storm restoration workflow or a sample prioritization algorithm for a utility operations team.