PSO plans for winter storms with disaster drill, showcasing new technology at Tulsa Fairgrounds

The Tulsa area power provider, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, has new technology to deploy for the next winter weather storm, and practiced using it during a drill on Wednesday.

PSO utilizes space at the Tulsa County Fairgrounds for emergency operations, and had 100 employees there rehearsing their actions during a large outage. PSO President Leigh Anne Strahler said the power company has upgraded parts of Central Park Hall to be ready for their operation to move it with little notice.

"We've done some network upgrades, new wi-fi capability, so we've really upgraded the facility as well to make sure we can respond as quickly and efficiently as we can," she said.

Tyler Devereux, the Director of Operations for PSO, said the power company has deployed new mobile tools for field crews to help them communicate and update conditions, and now has autonomous drones to survey damage and report back.

"Instead of someone 10 years ago going out to walk, and write down on paper what they needed, this many poles, etc, we can have a drone fly that and use AI to tell us what's needed, and be back in minutes to get supplies on the trucks and get them rolling as quickly as possible."