Project Highlights
- Headquartered in Spokane, WA
- 340,000 Electric Customers
- 300,000 Natural Gas Customers
- 30,000 sq miles / 4 Northwestern States
Avista is an energy company involved in the production, transmission, and distribution of energy as well as other energy-related businesses. Completing the first leg of their Utility Network (UN) journey, the Avista team has navigated migration of gas distribution and transmission to UN and UPDM. Avista, working with UDC, is using an automated approach to their transition from ArcGIS and ArcFM to ArcGIS Pro. They are running networks in parallel with change detection functionality that has been refined for the project.
UN Project Background and Goals
Avista has a long history of GIS utilization. Over the years, they have developed multiple custom business use applications for their utility, including mobile applications for electric transmission, gas exposed pipe, and leak survey. The utility most recently implemented ArcGIS Enterprise for gas and electric in preparation for the UN.
One of the primary goals of their move to UN is to use the out-of-the-box (OOTB) data model to align better with Industry standards going forward. They also want to make their move a gradual transition so that they can continue to edit within the geometric network model (GN) while exploring the advanced functionality offered by the UN. Having this capability would help Avista to achieve their goal to have all commodities operating on the same platform when they are ready to fully transition. Additionally, it will allow them to begin to share the Utility Network data out internally, leveraging the Esri Portal and associated application building infrastructure.
UDC is Avista’s partner, helping to navigate the complexities of migration and configuration to prepare their data, using automation where possible, to support the advanced functions of UN. We have created ArcGIS Pro Add-Ins and a robust conversion strategy to meet Avista’s goals. UDC’s HEIDE supports migration with an iterative approach and includes change detection synch from GN to UN for daily updates.
Project Approach
Supporting Avista’s gradual migration approach, the company began their journey on the gas side due to a less complex model than their electric. The team determined that once migrated, initial use cases would be read only and Avista would use web viewers and dashboards to start to visualize network data brought over. The team is actively prototyping these items through Portal, working with internal teams on requirements.
To support Avista’s desire to continue to edit workflows within GN and push changes to target UN daily, custom change detection synch tools were developed for the project. The tools include key functions such as validating topologies and building subnetworks regularly.
Helping Avista stay aligned with OOTB implementation, when differences were found between current model and new UPDM, Esri was consulted to see what changes might be included in future versions. In addition, any fields added to their UPDM model are prefixed with AVA to be easily identifiable in the future.
Journey Progress
Avista’s gradual pace approach to their UN transition is providing many benefits for the utility. It has given them the ability to carefully analyze all their data sources and determine what is needed and how it should be modeled within UN to achieve their goals for advanced network management which will be very important for the electric side and their future ADMS implementation. UPDM will provide Avista the advanced capability to manage both gas distribution and high-pressure distribution/transmission with one data model.
Using read only use cases and web viewers is helping the Avista team and their internal users to learn and grow in their understanding of UN. Change detection enables Avista to continue to use familiar editing workflows within GN until users and the utility is comfortable and ready to make a full transition. All these factors combined are leading to a very successful UN transition for Avista and its GIS users across the organization.
“The UDC team has been a great partner for Avista on this first leg of our multi-year journey toward the Utility Network. The team has been flexible in their approach, listening to Avista’s needs and using their expertise to respond with creative solutions. UDC helped Avista navigate the complexities of both the data model and the applications. UDC has been an advocate for making enhancements that will not only benefit Avista but also other customers on their journeys to the UN.”
Michael Littrel, Manager, Engineering Technical Services
Learn more about the Avista Utility Network transition by viewing our joint Esri conference presentation, Setting Your Own Pace – Avista’s Journey to the Utility Network.