IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020 - 42

In addition, the utility estimates that approximately
80% of a full-time employee's time was spent managing
the previous SCADA system through crashes, restarts, and
trouble ticket management. The robustness of the ADMS
has freed up that time for system planning, an advanced
metering infrastructure (AMI) deployment, and mobile
workforce management tools, all of which added to productivity and efficiency improvements. The IED and control panel templates offered by the ADMS vendor have
saved the utility countless hours when deploying new
reclosers, as compared to the previous SCADA system and
field-based RTUs, which required the manual configuration of every point.

Lessons Learned
A key factor in the success of an ADMS project is understanding that the applications must be considered part of
the complete system. Users should consider and integrate
all aspects of the ADMS, from the electrical system to the
model to the digital system.
When evaluating ADMS options, Peninsula Light Company recommends evaluating not only the applications that
promise the greatest returns in reliability or resiliency but
also the applications and tools that will allow operators to be
more productive using fewer resources. In Peninsula Light
Company's case, this included tools that increased the ease
and accuracy of GIS data imports and streamlined equipment deployment. For example, IED and control panel templates enabled the utility to set up a single device once and
propagate it across all identical sites in the field for speed
and consistency. Where it previously took several hours to
set up a new relay within a data concentrator, templates now
enable the utility to set up an entire substation in under an
hour. Tools such as these free up SCADA administrators,
operators, and field crews to perform more critical tasks and
eliminate the risk of knowledge loss about unique sites as
operators retire or leave the utility.
Finally, to overcome resistance to change, the utility
stresses the importance of leadership buy-in as well as letting
users see, early on, how the system will help them in their role.
For Peninsula Light Company, the big shift came with the generation of a switch order from a single FLISR operation during a test. FLISR showed that an area was not restored due to
a smaller wire type, a bottleneck that went unnoticed during
manual activities.

Achieving the Utility of the Future
From DERs to smart devices to distribution automation, the
pace of innovation in the electric power distribution industry is accelerating. Large and small utilities are subject to
the same challenges and expectations-improving reliability, increasing customer satisfaction, effectively leveraging
DERs in the grid, and trying to achieve all of this with a
dwindling skilled workforce.

ieee power & energy magazine

Smaller cooperatives and municipally run utilities are meeting these challenges through a variety of avenues, including
✔ deploying innovative but proven technology
✔ establishing supportive vendor relationships
✔ developing partnerships with vendors and national
labs to evaluate and test a variety of grid modernization solutions
✔ ensuring that new technology investments and upgrades are highly interoperable.
Ultimately, these utilities are well positioned for success
now and well into the future.

For Further Reading
P. Bronski, et al., "The economics of demand flexibility,"
Rocky Mountain Institute, Boulder, CO, 2015. [Online].
Available: https://rmi.org/insight/the-economics-of-demand
-flexibility/
S. Veda, H. Wu, M. Martin, and M. Baggu. "Developing
use cases for evaluation of ADMS applications to accelerate
technology adoption," presented at the IEEE Green Technologies Conf. [Online]. Available: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/
fy17osti/67614.pdf
L. Rosen, "Utilities assess future revenue and damage costs from increasing extreme weather events," Energy
Central, May 12, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www
.energycentral.com/c/ec/utilities-assess-future-revenue-and
-damage-costs-increasing-extreme-weather
S. Brody, M. Rogers, and G. Siccardo, "Why, and how,
utilities should start to manage climate-change risk," McKinsey & Company, Apr. 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www
.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/
our-insights/why-and-how-utilities-should-start-to-manage
-climate-change-risk
J. Monge, "Every asset we deploy in the field has the potential to become a sensor," Greentech Media, May 28, 2019.
[Online]. Available: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/
read/every-asset-we-deploy-in-the-field-has-the-potential-to
-become-a-sensor
ETS Insights, "Managing complexity in the distributed
reality: A utility perspective on DERMs," Zpryme, Austin,
TX, May 2, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://etsinsights.com/
reports/managing-complexity-in-the-distributed-reality-a
-utility-perspective-on-derms/

Biographies
Young Ngo is with Survalent Technology, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada.
Herschel Arant is with the Central Georgia Electric Membership Cooperative, Jackson, Georgia.
Chris Bilby is with Holy Cross Energy, Glenwood Springs,
Colorado.
Amy Grice is with Peninsula Light Company, Gig Harbor, Washington.
p&e

january/february 2020

https://www.rmi.org/insight/the-economics-of-demand-flexibility/ https://www.rmi.org/insight/the-economics-of-demand-flexibility/ https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/67614.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/67614.pdf https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/utilities-assess-future-revenue-and-damage-costs-increasing-extreme-weather https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/utilities-assess-future-revenue-and-damage-costs-increasing-extreme-weather https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/utilities-assess-future-revenue-and-damage-costs-increasing-extreme-weather https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/why-and-how-utilities-should-start-to-manage-climate-change-risk https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/why-and-how-utilities-should-start-to-manage-climate-change-risk https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/why-and-how-utilities-should-start-to-manage-climate-change-risk https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/why-and-how-utilities-should-start-to-manage-climate-change-risk https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/every-asset-we-deploy-in-the-field-has-the-potential-to-become-a-sensor https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/every-asset-we-deploy-in-the-field-has-the-potential-to-become-a-sensor https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/every-asset-we-deploy-in-the-field-has-the-potential-to-become-a-sensor https://zpryme.com/reports/managing-complexity-in-the-distributed-reality-a-utility-perspective-on-derms/ https://zpryme.com/reports/managing-complexity-in-the-distributed-reality-a-utility-perspective-on-derms/ https://zpryme.com/reports/managing-complexity-in-the-distributed-reality-a-utility-perspective-on-derms/

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020