IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020 - 44

It is good practice to consolidate the electrical equipment asset
data into a geospatial information system to be a single data source
about the location and static properties of the equipment.
operators making full use of such applications. Numerous
small-scale pilot projects have been executed and completed
where the value of such advanced applications as fault location isolation and service restoration (FLISR) and integrated
volt/volt-ampere reactive optimization (IVVO) have been
positively confirmed. Successful systemwide operational deployments of advanced applications, however, are much
less common. There are multiple reasons for this, including
insufficient numerical robustness of advanced applications
to provide solutions under a wide variety of system conditions. Other reasons include model-magnitude, complexity,
and data-quality issues.
This article takes a system vendor's perspective to discuss the functional requirements of an ADMS to achieve
successful advanced application deployments. Conventional
wisdom is shared along with best practices learned by distribution utilities that have successfully made the journey and
achieved full operational rollouts of advanced applications in
an ADMS. These utilities continue to develop their ADMSs
to meet the operational challenges of distributed energy
resource (DER) penetration and extreme weather events.
Considerations for preproject planning, project execution,
project teams, and postproject operation and maintenance
to achieve a successful ADMS with advanced applications
are discussed.

Overview of ADMS
The goal of an ADMS is to bundle the core distribution
operations functions of a SCADA system, outage management, switching, and the advanced applications of network
analysis and optimization into a single solution that can be
used through a single user interface (UI) with a common
user experience (UX). This bundling results in several benefits. One is convenience-fewer chair swivels-as information for the human user is better assimilated and more
readily accessible. This, in turn, improves the safety and
efficiency of operations and reduces user stress and data
errors. Users can focus more on oversight and command
rather than spending time integrating data from disparate
systems. The ADMS also can achieve a new level of situational awareness through the single UI/UX. An example
high-level functional architecture of an ADMS is shown
in Figure 1.
In Figure 1, native interoperability is achieved between
the functions of outage management, switching, and
advanced applications of network analysis and optimization modules, shown at the top of the diagram, through the
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ieee power & energy magazine

common distribution network operations model (DNOM)
shown in the center. The DNOM must be a physics-based
representation of the distribution power system for the network analysis functions to produce realistic solutions. In
particular, the individual phases and neutral and ground
connections of each piece of conducting equipment must
be included. The model, which typically extends from the
high-voltage transmission system to the distribution customer meters, encompasses the medium- and low-voltage
distribution system equipment. Therefore, there should be
no hard constraints on the voltage levels included in the
DNOM to accommodate the various operational business
processes of electric utilities, especially around the high- to
medium-voltage substations. Today, more and more utilities are interested in including the subtransmission network
in the scope of their ADMSs to correctly model outages
involving higher voltage levels from an outage management
perspective and allow the advanced applications to consider
load imbalances originating from the distribution system in
both near-real-time operations and proposed reconfiguration switching plans.
The collection and organization of data for electrical
equipment assets in the distribution power system as needed
to populate the ADMS DNOM are very large and never-ending tasks. Much of this same information is critical for other
types of distribution utility systems, such as those involving
asset management and strategic planning and design applications. It is good practice to consolidate the electrical equipment asset data into a geospatial information system (GIS)
to be a single data source about the location and static properties of the equipment. Those data are fed into the ADMS
DNOM, as seen at the lower-left corner of Figure 1. A utility's investment in and processes for maintaining its GIS data
often affects the success of an ADMS and advanced applications. But the ADMS can also provide valuable feedback to
help strategically find and correct data errors in the GIS over
time. Combining a data analytics system with the ADMS can
go even further to provide more automated maintenance of
the GIS data.
The model must be physically accurate enough to represent all of the many types of connectivity permutations
encountered in the operation of the distribution network.
From an as-designed or as-built perspective, this means that
the DNOM must support a variety of nominal conductor
configurations, including
✔ three phase, two phase, and single phase, with and
without neutrals
january/february 2020

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020

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