Electric Operations Outage Management and Electronic Logging Software

The City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) is soliciting proposals from qualified vendors to provide a proven, fully cloud-hosted Outage Management System (OMS), electronic operational logging platform, and switching order management suite. The objective of this procurement is to modernize and automate CPAU Electric Operations' control room workflows, transmission and distribution outage coordination, and real-time operational logging.

The proposed software solution must provide robust capabilities for authoring, reviewing, and executing high-voltage electrical switching orders, managing planned and unplanned outages, and maintaining auditable electronic control room logs. A critical functional requirement of the platform is native, automated data synchronization with the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and RC West reporting interfaces, as well as built-in compliance tracking to satisfy North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) reliability standards.

The selected vendor will deliver perpetual or software-as-a-service (SaaS) licensing, secure cloud hosting, system configuration and testing, comprehensive user and administrator training, and ongoing 24/7 technical support and maintenance over a five-year agreement.

CPAU currently relies on manual, document-based procedures (including word-processing templates and spreadsheets) for logging operational events, drafting high-voltage switching programs, and tracking grid outages. With ongoing municipal grid electrification, increasing system complexity, and stringent regional regulatory mandates, manual workflows present operational vulnerabilities, increase the potential for human error during hazardous field operations, and require burdensome administrative overhead to support compliance audits.

This project will establish a centralized, modern digital operations platform that improves operator situational awareness, ensures field crew safety through automated interlocking switching steps, and mitigates audit and operational risk.

Proposals that demonstrate proven deployment across municipal or regional electric utilities, native (out-of-the-box) API connectivity with CAISO/RC West systems without requiring costly custom third-party middleware, and turnkey implementation will best meet CPAU’s operational and safety requirements.