PROJECT OVERVIEW

In 2001, Westlake partnered with several vendors to research and create an emergency based wireless solution to prevent rolling blackouts within the state of California. Although there were many businesses in California that would voluntarily turn off their power consumption when asked, the state had no strategic way to notify so many businesses, in so many areas, in a very short amount of time. Most importantly, to prevent blackouts, it was critical to know who had successfully received a notification and how many megawatts they could shed at any given time. Using a private Extranet designed by Westlake Software and commercial two-way wireless devices (cell phones, pagers, PDAs, etc.) on multiple wireless networks (WebLink, Nextel, Arch, Verizon, AT&T, etc.), Westlake was able to automatically notify as many as 250 of the largest power users in the state, guarantee that the message was received and how many megawatts could be shed, and free up power to over 1.4 million homes within minutes with the assistance of a local power aggregator. In addition, Westlake was also denoted as a communication point of potential black out notification for all businesses and consumers (wireless and e-mail) for the California’s Office of Emergency Services (OES). We estimated that the state of California was able to save over $100 million in power costs and additional benefits received in keeping hundreds of thousands of people employed by not interrupting power to the local state economy.

This solution was widely covered within the wireless industry as well as CNN Financial News, Mobile Computing Magazine, and the Ventura County Register. Making a slight enhancement to existing commercial wireless technology, Westlake’s solution helped prevent virtually all rolling blackouts in California in 2001 and 2002. This wireless software application proved to be a highly effective solution to a difficult and broad reaching communication challenge using existing wireless technology from multiple wireless providers. This study is a continuation of our research into mission critical wireless applications. This study identifies and assesses several liabilities found in using wireless technology by our nation’s emergency services and first responders.