Migrating a utility onto an Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) sets the foundation for future advanced grid management capabilities. Having access to real-time Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) data and expanding the reach of automation onto the grid feeds huge opportunities for grid optimization, control operations, and enhanced visibility along all feeders.
When approaching an ADMS initiative, it’s important to have a realistic viewpoint into how these changes will impact your data, processes, systems, and people. Reviewing these four key areas of your organization ahead of deployment gives you a strategic head start on implementing an operational ADMS for your enterprise.
1. Data Readiness
An ADMS brings together a lot of information that may not have always comingled in your organization. Prepare for your SCADA data to play alongside your GIS model and intermingle with your customer data and smart meter data. The more prep work you can do early to ensure your data is clean and adheres to standard data models, the easier it will be to bring it all together in your ADMS.
To get started, evaluate how much customization has been made to your data over time. Be sure to include these primary checks and balances:
- Review for accuracy
- Perform audits
- Understand which data is critical vs. which data is nice to have
While most of your data should have a place to land in your new ADMS, there may be some things that you no longer need that can be cut for better operational efficiency, or you may have some data that won’t be compatible. If there is ambiguity in your data, now’s the time to shake out as much as possible ahead of introducing it to your new ADMS.
Now is also a good time to review and evaluate your existing reports, key performance indicators (KPIs), and other metrics. Some key questions you may want to resolve include:
Are there any reports that are no longer serving their purpose and can be cut?
What are all the underlying metrics and sources?
Is there a legacy excel macro hiding amongst all your other reports that is widely used but unsupported?
Shaking all of these out early will help shape your project scope and reduce surprises when someone’s custom report fails to run once the new systems are in place.
2. Process Readiness
Simplify. Simplify. Simplify… Experience often shows us that simplicity is key to success. Process waste elimination is a benefit regardless of whether you are introducing new tools and systems or not. Going into a complex project, it is important to recognize that the way things have always been done isn’t necessarily going to be the best way for things to be done in the future.
Get Back to Basics…Now is the opportunity to strip processes down to their basics. There are likely pieces of your current processes that have been added over the years because they work around issues in your current systems. There’s no need to bring that baggage with you. Having solid and current process maps built and streamlined going into a multifaceted enterprise project will set you apart and put you ahead of the curve.
New Processes, New People
On the flip side, ADMS introduces new process(es) that will require a full-time distribution power engineer in the Operations Center to analyze. The engineer can look at the results from the advanced applications and take advantage of the model’s study mode functionality to learn how Optimal Network Reconfiguration (ONR) would impact current system statuses.
The engineer should also prepare for handling voltage/var violations along feeders and applying the model driven visibility for managing all feeders. ADMS manages all feeders regardless of how much investment has been made with SCADA devices along the feeders. The results from the model themselves will provide much better visibility than pre-ADMS.
3. Systems Readiness
An ADMS touches a lot of your Electric organization. Obviously, your SCADA and GIS systems need to be prepared to integrate. With an Outage Management System (OMS) in the mix, your work management system and everything from call taking, to the field, to accounting will have touchpoints. If you’re migrating from another OMS system, your order types and structures may need to be rebuilt.
Your networking team, cybersecurity, and operation and information technologies (OT/IT) all have integration infrastructure that will be touched in some way by ADMS and may not all be easily compatible. Not to worry… The different ADMS vendors understand the architecture involved and which pieces of your ADMS system should live in the different network zones. However, do prepare for your internal network and security employees to be engaged for much of the setup and cutover to ensure all the open points and secure points maintain their integrity without hindering system use or violating any regulatory statutes.
4. People Readiness
Preparing an organization of people for a large change is usually challenging, and an ADMS implementation can have a wide range of impacts in your organization. Questions to prepare for and address in this area may include:
How will your operation’s organization change?
How will you manage the overlap and integration of your IT and OT resources?
Will there be leadership changes or structural changes to your overall organization that can come with new systems?
How do you plan to set your people up for success through all this change?
How can you avoid implementing in a bubble, especially if ADMS is one of a string of significant changes impacting your organization?
Supporting Internal People Readiness
Steps supporting people readiness within your organization may include:
- Introducing new concepts early and often to help ease some of the worry of change management
- Sending a contingent to a conference or user group to learn from their peers about the benefits and challenges of moving to an ADMS
- Arming your most prolific people with the knowledge they will need going into a project – this also should help alleviate some surprises as the project progresses
- Preparing/training for new roles within the Operations Center, such as the full-time distribution power engineer
Not every project is the same, and each will encounter their own unique challenges, but these base fundamentals should be universal.
Supporting External People Readiness
It’s worth noting that employees aren’t the only ones impacted by an ADMS implementation. It’s important to also have a strong understanding of how ADMS impacts your customers.
As the footprint of your ADMS grows and your organization leverages more of the potential from the system, this change can also reflect in your customer interactions through your call center, customer portal, outage map, and outage center. More real-time data on the back end opens the possibility for more real-time information on the customer end. This also requires some sensitivity to how your customer’s data may move through the system during impactful events to ensure you aren’t over-messaging.
Start Preparing Today
ADMS opens the door for Electric organizations to become advanced digital utilities. Though implementing a full ADMS can be a sizable effort, breaking it up into manageable pieces from the beginning can result in a much smoother transition and easier lift.
Acting on the four pillars of readiness outlined in this article – data, process, systems, and people ahead of implementation positions your organization for success going into an ADMS project. By proactively preparing in these critical areas, you’re not just staying ahead of the curve; you’re defining it.
Contact UDC for more information about ADMS preparation and read about our ADMS Readiness and Consulting services.