Mayor Wilson: 0:01

Good morning. This is Sean Wilson, the mayor of Waynesville, and today I have a special guest, daniel Shelton, who is our electric department supervisor, and he will share a little bit more information about our new application or reporting system, and it's called Hometown Grid and it's used for outages such as water and electric for those that have a service with the city of Waynesville. So please enjoy this interview. Okay, I have Daniel Sheldon with me and he's going to share a little bit more about the Hometown Grid website. All right, daniel, you want to go ahead and talk a little bit about that program.

Daniel Sheldon: 0:43

Yes, thank you, mayor. So the city has always been striving to improve our communication with our customers and as we're moving into the smart city phase, john Doyle and the mayor is trying to get to the point to where we can communicate with our customers so much easier and more effectively when it comes to power outages and water outages. So there's a new system that the city is using called hometowngridcom. The webpage for the public outage map is hometowngridcom, backslash Waynesville. There's a number on there that you would be calling for your power outages and your water outages and that you know text message or call, and it's 833-693-4925. You can also call the city hall at 573-774-6171 and hit option one to report a power outage or a water outage.

Daniel Sheldon: 1:48

We ask that you clearly define if it is a power outage or a water outage when you make the phone call or the text message. If you text in to that number with the outage, you can also upload any photos that you may have taken. If there's a water leak, you can upload that. The guys that are on call will automatically see that. It allows a better response time. They know what they need to bring ahead of time. If there's a transformer on fire or anything.

Daniel Sheldon: 2:19

The customers get interaction with this as well too. So the system actually sends you. If you're texting it in, it will send you responses, trying to gather more information to better assist the people en route to try to fix the problem. There's a public outage map Like I said, it's hometowngridcom backslash Waynesville that you will be able to see your outage and track and get updates that way as well too. So on major outages, like a major water outage or a major power outage or something, we can send out messages through this to the community as well too. So you will be notified when water is restored. You can get notified when power is restored or if there's something that's going to take a severity like an April storm. You know we can go on there and outline a specific area in the community and we can push messages out to people that's called into this.

Mayor Wilson: 3:19

Yeah, I got. I got a question here, so is this a subscription?

Daniel Sheldon: 3:40

And I'm asking these questions because I know that the citizens are going to have these questions Is this something that you sign up for or is it don't have to subscribe Nothing? Then you can log in from your phone or your computer at home or a tablet or anything the hometown grid dot com backslash Waynesville from anywhere you know I can. You can be in a different state and still see that it's not a subscription. They don't have to sign up for nothing. It's something that the city has signed up for, this program and that we are implemented. So, yeah, there's nothing that the customers have to do.

Mayor Wilson: 4:15

OK and I wanted to kind of further communicate with the community as it regards to what happens after you call that phone number. Can you kind of walk them through the steps of what they will receive and um the validation from the, the from conception to is fixed, like the problem arises, right to the point where, um it gets resolved. There are some steps that's happening in between. Can you kind of explain that process?

Daniel Sheldon: 4:45

so on our, once we receive the message, the notification that there is an outage of some sort, whether it be water or power, we have the ability to log into Hometown Grid and see all of the notes. So we ask the customers give as much information as possible whenever they call in. Did they hear a loud boom? Is the water spewing out of the ground in the backyard, the front yard? As much information as possible, therefore, because whatever they either text or call, whatever they say on the call, all of that gets relayed to us and we can see every bit of that. So the more information the better. So we also ask, if it's possible.

Daniel Sheldon: 5:26

Most people have cell phones now. Text messaging this number is better than calling it, because you'll get responses faster in a text message. It automatically comes back and it's asking you more questions. It's trying to get more details from you. It wants you to upload pictures. It's going to ask you if your neighbors are experiencing power outages. It's going to ask all of this. Every bit of that gets recorded and logged so that we can see it on our end as we go through and just like but there's, the other day we had a main break and we had a few people call or text into this hometown grid.

Daniel Sheldon: 6:02

If we know it's going to take several hours to fix this, we can go on there and we can say look, there's a eight inch water line main break, we're waiting for dig rights. We got to do this and we can push and hit send and then those messages will get sent back out to whoever text in and they will be updated. You can also go to the hometowngridcom backslash Waynesville. You'll be able to see everybody that's called in for an outage whether it's water or power is on that. It's logged onto that website. You'll be able to see the little dots, so that way you can verify that it did accept it. Somebody has received it and they are en route to fix it.

Mayor Wilson: 6:44

And that's that's outstanding, because during the we had two significant storms this year. That's right we had. Both of them was on election days, but the one in April. I remember staying up all night and texting and trying to inform the citizens, and this is one of the ways that we have become more of that smart city platform. For those that don't know what smart city is, it's not just about us pushing information out, it's about collecting information. It's two-way communication. That's what a smart city is. Is is that we're able to gather information as fast as we're able to push it out. And um, and with this model and I'm very thankful for daniel and his team and finding this program because it certainly helps our community become more informed about what's going on, and that's what he's communicating here is just everything is about getting information to the citizens, letting them know what's going on in the process.

Mayor Wilson: 7:37

We don't want to leave you in the dark. When you're in the dark, when you're out of power, we want to make sure that we keep that communication open so that you know where we are, what we're doing and you can also see how many outages across the city that are out, and you can kind of see it from that standpoint, but we want to make sure we maximize using this. Now, I was talking to Daniel earlier. He told me it was something that was very important that you would do when you call in is you have to make sure you state that type of outage that you have. You cannot just call in and say I have an outage, you, I have a power outage or I have a water outage. That way we can notify the appropriate team. So we would need your help in that regard and then, once it's complete, say Daniel, you go out and you fix the issue. You immediately do what. You report it through the system.

Daniel Sheldon: 8:31

Yeah, so, like the other night, I got a call on JC Street. We'll leave all the other information out, but it was just on JC Street at a particular residence there, so I show up there to fix the power outage. It ended up being a meter. Our breaker was tripped in the meter base. It was able to get it turned back on. The customer had it.

Daniel Sheldon: 8:52

So when I get back in the truck, the power outage is restored at that point. So I log in right there in the truck. The power outage is restored at that point. So I log in right there in the truck, I go in and I type in my notes exactly what was going on, what happened, what I did to fix the problem and acknowledged it and cleared it and then it automatically took it away from the public map. So as you're watching that public map right there, you can see the little dots start to disappear and you can know. You know that your power has been restored If it is a major April storm like we had in April and we have a major feeder line with 300 people out and we get it turned back on.

Daniel Sheldon: 9:30

So what we would do at that point is we can go in on our side and we could draw a polygon around everybody that was affected. That just got received and we can type in a note saying that your power has been restored and push that information out and everybody that called into the system will receive a notification that their powers have been restored Because, like in an April storm, a lot of people had stayed in a hotel for a day or two where you're not at your house. So if you're not there, you're getting a notification saying, hey, my power's been restored and you can return back home. Or even if you're watching the map on the public outage map, as the dots disappear, you can tell your dot where your home is. Is there? Well, once we clear it, it goes away and you can also know that way as well.

Mayor Wilson: 10:18

That's outstanding, that they can be notified even if they're in a hotel room. Yes, so they'll have to keep checking and trying to figure out and use social media, and our goal is to utilize social media. But we're trying to expand our platforms to communicate directly with the public, because not everyone uses social media. So that's our goal. Did you have anything else that you want to add?

Daniel Sheldon: 10:40

Yeah, I would just also like to talk about the fact where you know when we're trying to better communicate with our citizens. I refer back to the April storm because it's fresh on everybody's mind. We were receiving hundreds of phone calls every minute, every hour. Well, sometimes we only have one or two lines open. People are getting busy signals. They can't get ahold of somebody because we are constantly picking. This system can answer. If everybody in the entire city called in at one time, this system can respond to it instantly. So you're not going to get a busy signal, you will get a response with this system, and that's good.

Mayor Wilson: 11:20

There's no line, that's right. Everybody is the first customer, that's right. Yeah, so that's outstanding. So I want to say thank you again for joining me. I always wanted to get Daniel on here anyway, but I want to get him on here to kind of share what they do out here for our community with regard to our electric department and also this new program. We're going to try to put a video together, show you how to navigate through the website, all of those different things, but for right now we do have the phone. It's 1-833-833-693-4925. That's 1-833-693-4925. And then you got hometowngridcom, slash Waynesville. So once you log on to there you'll be able to see exactly what we're talking about and we got this program together just for you.

Daniel Sheldon: 12:22

So we do have this now posted on our Facebook page and our website, so with that link. So if you go to our Facebook page or our website, you can find that link right there and just automatically click.

Mayor Wilson: 12:33

Yeah, and currently, for the next four days, we will see an alert on the website that's going to direct you to that very link. So again, I just wanted to kind of share that. Thank you, daniel, for joining us today, and we'll see you around town.