Project Highlights:
- Ameren
- 7,500+ circuit mi transmission
- 2.4M electric customers
- 900k+ natural gas customers
- 64k sq. mi service territory
As part of Ameren’s digital strategy to build an operational ‘Network Model Manager’, the utility upgraded its electric transmission GIS infrastructure to the ArcGIS® Utility Network and Network Information Management System. This transformation provided opportunities for additional system modernizations and enhancements, including upgrading the company’s Transmission GIS Web Viewer, an application for managing transmission operations and ongoing construction projects, from ArcGIS® Web AppBuilder to ArcGIS® Experience Builder.
Experience Builder is an accessible and configurable solution from Esri that enables users to create interactive web applications. It allows various sources—such as data, maps, applications, and customizable graphic data components known as widgets—to dynamically interact with each other, providing Ameren with greater visualization and insights into its transmission data. This promotion positioned the newly remodeled GIS as the data source for the viewer. By utilizing the high-fidelity data from the Utility Network, Ameren is providing a connected, real-world network view for its Operations team to better support transmission operations management.
Ameren achieved a greater return on its digital investments by capitalizing on its Utility Network transformation to modernize its Transmission GIS Web Viewer. The upgrade effort aligned the legacy web application with the new requirements in Experience Builder and included upgrading and rebuilding transmission widget functionalities in the viewer.
Rebuilding Outage Management Functionality
To replicate the viewer in Experience Builder, UDC redesigned Ameren’s Web AppBuilder templates, reconfigured and developed the legacy widgets, and tested the application to ensure all required functionality was in place for continuous operational support.
Most of the legacy widgets were restored in the viewer using Experience Builder’s ready-made widgets. However, UDC rebuilt three of Ameren’s custom widgets in the viewer that are used for outage management operations and analysis: Lightning Search, Weather Radar, and Planned Outage.
Lightning Search
The Lightning Search widget retrieves data from the satellite lightning database and maps lightning strikes that occur near Ameren transmission lines. This data assists the System Protection group in identifying fault lines. The team can manipulate the data to display strikes within a specific date range, allowing them to effectively analyze historical trends and behavior patterns for more accurate forecasting.
Weather Radar
UDC reconfigured this widget to meet the needs of the Operations team. Enhancements included a looped animated radar view and automatic refreshes, ensuring that the most current weather event data is displayed in the operations center.
Additionally, the Operations team uses this widget to monitor recent lightning strikes, which helps with identifying potential outages. By leveraging the satellite lightning database, the widget automatically displays strikes every ten minutes.
Planned Outage
Ameren’s legacy Planned Outage widget was previously managed through a table-based application. With the upgrade, the utility can visualize these events spatially on the map, which has become a key advantage for the Operations team in planning and managing new projects as well as identifying customers impacted by the outages.
Making the Move
Ameren’s decision to upgrade its viewer to Experience Builder was driven by the solution’s ability to provide future ongoing support and the accessible, ready-made widgets tailored to the Utility Network, such as the Utility Network Trace widget.
Upgrading the viewer in parallel with the Utility Network business transformation, rather than waiting until Web AppBuilder was retired, saved Ameren significant time by staying ahead of the curve as well as enabled the utility to immediately begin utilizing the Utility Network’s capabilities for operations at the conclusion of the project.
Developer vs. Portal
With the decision of when to upgrade determined, Ameren then needed to decide whether to implement the Developer edition or the Portal edition of Experience Builder. A key advantage of the Developer edition that the utility considered is its ability to streamline updates in the viewer; new functionalities can be added seamlessly with each Esri release. Despite the functionality updates requiring a more hands-on approach, Ameren ultimately chose to go with the Portal edition due to the file usage accessibility and support, flexibility for creating and modifying application functions, and the user-friendly configuration for updating individual applications.
Experience Builder Upgrade Components:
The Experience Builder upgrade solution included:
- Developing the new Electric Transmission Viewer on the Experience Builder platform
- Reviewing legacy functionality to determine business needs
- Implementing new Utility Network functionality into the viewer
- Upgrading/rebuilding widgets
- Updating legacy integrations
This project marks the completion of Phase One of Ameren’s digital modernization initiative. In the next phase, the utility plans to map additional information into its Utility Network and Experience Builder application, including internal substation components. This initiative has paved the way for other Ameren businesses to follow suit. The Electric Distribution and Gas businesses have begun their own Utility Network journeys, following the lead of the Electric Transmission team.
Learn more about Ameren’s digital modernization initiative through our additional publications:
Pioneering the Electric Transmission UN Model at Ameren
Implementing Advanced Network Modeling in Electric Transmission