Although the industry understands that the Utility Network (UN) fulfills the vision to implement a modern GIS digital twin, its adoption still faces major challenges and obstacles, particularly within the Electric community.

Technically speaking, it is widely recognized that, when compared to the Geometric Network, the UN is far superior in its capability to represent equipment and to model power flow, both with high level of detail. The improved network behavior of the UN is partially due to:

1. Its associative model:
   1. Connectivity Associations to establish nodal connectivity among the elements of the underlying network, allowing for improved visualization and white-space management in highly dense areas while maintaining critical network connectivity or the ability to specify how legacy data connects within the network that was previously spatially disconnected.
   2. Structural Associations to indicate where structures, such as poles, manholes, vaults, and cabinets support and give access to network elements and allowing this information to be extracted or quickly identified
   3. Containment Associations to model the inner components of electric equipment or larger containment areas (such as substations) for the purposes of analysis or data extraction
2. Automated, flexible subnetwork management framework (for varying definitions in distribution, transmission, substation circuits)
3. A suite of tools for Advanced Trace-Based Analytics and Network Management such a Trace-by-Phase, Subnetwork Export, and others

Additionally, the seamless integration of this core functionality within ArcGIS Enterprise, exposes the network within the digital twin to a multitude of client applications.

Yet, after several Electric UN implementations, some customers are also reporting the challenges that the UN imposes on many common workflows: migration, editing, imports from design tools and integrations with external systems, to name a few.  There has also been feedback regarding the additional effort required to edit and maintain multiple features per equipment and their correct associations (which can be mitigated by extensions such as SSP Productivity).

Figure 1 – Examples of highly detailed equipment implemented using UN associativity. Left, 3-Phase Overhead Transformer; right, PMH-9 Switchgear.

Much of this is tied to the additional data quality standards required to support a sophisticated UN model.  For customers who may be seeking a simple path to the UN platform, before seeking to enhance their data to take advantage of the UN capability, no such ‘shortcut’ existed.

Within the last year, however, updates in the Esri Solutions Electric Foundation data model together with adjustments to the core trace behavior allow us to offer our clients a UN implementation that minimizes the difficulties inherent to the fully nodal approach. Two of these improvements are:

1. The inclusion of Non-Spatial Objects (NSO’s) within Esri Solutions Electric Foundation
2. Corrected behavior of terminal devices

The overall characteristics of this Electric UN implementation are:

1. Equipment is modeled as Banks containing Units
2. Lines contain Wires
3. Equipment and Lines attach to, or are included in, Structures
4. Banks snap to lines via geometric coincidence
5. Power flow is operable-by-phase via the Banks
6. The network is configured for Phase Propagation
7. And the whole implementation supports core Advanced Trace-Based Analytics

In close collaboration with Esri Solutions, SSP has identified the key elements within the Electric Foundation that are necessary to develop such a Bank/Units Geo-Coincident implementation.

Figure 2 – Examples of equipment implemented using Geo-Coincident Bank/Unit model. Left, 3-Phase Overhead Transformer; right, PMH-9 Switchgear.

Then, using the native Asset Package Configuration and Renaming tools, we have created an SSP-Configuration of the Electric Foundation, which aligns with Esri’s approach for establishing a baseline model, and if necessary, extension to satisfy individual client’s needs.

By adopting the characteristics described above, customers can choose a path that reduces some of the impacts on migration and data management workflows, often experienced with a more detailed, spatial representation of the network nodal model without a reduction of key benefits provided by the Utility Network. For example, instead of making many detailed decisions about the spatial representation of multi-phase devices during the migration, traditional ‘banked’ features and related units can now be migrated essentially “as is.” Instead of having to learn new tools (provided by SSP’s Productivity) for editing multi-phase devices as features, users can leverage similar editing workflows to what they have today out of the box.

SSP realizes that this approach may or may not be right for your path to the Utility Network. There is a myriad of benefits to modeling and managing a more comprehensive, visualization of real-world device configuration. For example, seeing a visual representation of how individual devices are connected by phase can help quickly identify data issues.  SSP has invested heavily in building migration and Productivity tools for managing more detailed, spatially distributed implementation, but realize this path isn’t for everyone.

In closing, SSP is confident that the Geo-Coincident Bank/Units configuration of the Electric Foundation brings an interesting option to the Electric community that provides the powerful capabilities of the Utility Network by means of a familiar model. Reach out to us at SSP for any further details!