New ADMS Software Helps Grid Operators Thrive in a More Complex World

Customer demands, fuel prices, renewable energy, electric vehicles, cyber-attacks, and climate change are all impacting the way electric utilities operate their assets. These factors introduce new complexities and increase uncertainty, a fact that - as a leading supplier of electric grid technology - GE Digital understands.

GE Digital’s Advanced Distribution Management Solutions (ADMS) are staying ahead of the ever-changing digital utilities landscape with a single platform for safe and secure electric grid operational control. The latest ADMS release includes customer- and market-driven platform enhancements aimed at solving the challenges of grid management in three key areas: distribution optimization, outage response, and distributed energy resource (DER) orchestration. 

Embracing the new normal

Throughout its history GE has earned a reputation for creating products and services that help solve some of the world’s toughest challenges. GE Digital continues that leadership today with software solutions that turn, what some utilities perceive as the threat of DERs, into an opportunity to improve customer choice and help balance bi-directional operational loads.

DERs have many benefits and their incorporation into utility portfolios is all but necessary to enable digital grid transformation. That said, traditional utility business models are not typically equipped to handle DERs and the associated requirements for advanced digital modeling, forecasting, and orchestration.

With GE’s DER-aware ADMS, electric utilities can unlock the full potential of DERs and seamlessly integrate these resources for more efficient and flexible operations. GE Digital’s newest ADMS release enhances DER awareness though augmented modeling and fully accounting for DERs and all of their technical and contractual parameters, meaning operators can better understand the full impact of DERs on the operations of their grid. They can analyze potential forecasted DER load and how it may be injected into utility grid operations by leveraging a unique look-ahead power flow analysis, improving DER orchestration across the entire distribution grid. 

In addition, a new IEEE 2030.5 Gateway sets a standard and supports the full spectrum of parameters for DERs on the grid. The Gateway enables utilities to connect and manage the full lifecycle of DERs across all of the utility, inclusive of retailers, aggregators, and prosumer systems.

Meeting uncertainty with predictability

When it comes to outage management, GE’s ADMS has already proven itself at scale as a benchmark solution by performing flawlessly through some of the worst recorded storms. With integrated tools, operators can assess, dispatch, report, and restore power from outages. Now, the platform is expanding beyond traditional centralized outage management system (OMS) functions, adding mobility, damage assessment, and moving towards predictive analytics to minimize disruptions. Moreover, by leveraging the new Storm Assist application, utilities can rapidly expand their outage response workforce during times of intense activity. Supporting the restoration process through the decentralization of outage dispatching functions, Storm Assist helps utilities rapidly scale the number of dispatching personnel from any location - including remote offices, other regions, and assistance utilities - quickly and securely.

The latest ADMS release continues to build on our proven and scalable suite of advanced power applications. For example, GE’s ADMS now provides further advancements to operational optimization via additional fault location, isolation, and service restoration (FLISR) functionality with new adaptive relay logic, peak load configuration, and problem formulation granularity. This functionality increases the number of customer isolations and restorations during an outage for improved performance indices (i.e., SAIDI, CAIDI, CMI, etc.).

Another improvement is a step change in situational awareness, delivering granular locational abilities (fault location, field work, etc.). This is achieved though the seamless integration between ADMS and GIS, supporting the modeling and display of non-electrical objects (i.e., poles, street lights, etc.).

Importantly, GE’s power applications are also DER-aware, empowering utilities to understand impact of DERs on grid operations. Utilities can mitigate for and take advantage of these objects and understand backfeed, hidden load, and new voltage profiles.

Driving flexibility, efficiency, and security

Digital grid modernization and transformation is complex and mired by the rise in DERs (including renewables), the complexity of the active grid, the unprecedented rate of change, and an overwhelming amount of data. The ADMS is just one solution in GE Digital’s diverse portfolio enabling next generation electric utility operations. GE’s ADMS injects simplicity by combining SCADA, distribution optimization, outage response, DER orchestration, and mobility onto a single fully-integrated platform. By design, applications are secure and built to be natively interoperable.

GE’s ADMS serves approximately 25 percent of all meters globally. And with a commitment to our existing customers and power consumers around the world, GE continues to build on platform functionality to increase flexibility, efficiency, and security of the distribution grid.

GE is the only vendor with proven industry experience and technology expertise to provide electric utilities with end-to-end solutions. GE’s differentiated offerings span the software portfolio (AEMS, ADMS, GIS, Mobility, and Grid Analytics) and provide utilities with a unique and scalable approach to automated, high-quality operations.