In this Energy Central Featured Expert Interview, we’re excited to welcome William Craft, Vice President of Enterprise Architecture at UDC. With over two decades of experience spanning Geographic Information Systems (GIS), information technology, and cloud-based enterprise architecture, William has become a go-to leader in helping utilities modernize and integrate their systems. His background includes not only strategic consulting, but also hands-on leadership managing GIS system administration for a major U.S. electric and gas utility—giving him a uniquely well-rounded perspective on how to design solutions that are not only cutting-edge, but also practical, scalable, and sustainable.
In our conversation, William shares how the evolving utility landscape—including the rise of distributed energy resources (DERs), smart grid technologies, and AI—demands that GIS play a more central and integrated role than ever before. And this all serves as a taste to what sorts of insights he’s going to continue to bring to the Energy Central Community moving forward as a part of our Network of Experts.
Read on and if you have questions for him, the comments are open!
Matt Chester: Welcome to Energy Central as one of our Featured Experts! I’d love to give you a chance to have the community get to know you, so please start by introducing yourself, sharing your role in the power sector, and maybe what your key areas of interest and expertise are?
William Craft: My professional career began with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Information Technology (IT) about 20 years ago. Since 2013, my focus has been helping utilities solve problems through a wide variety of enterprise technologies. In addition to my consulting background, I also led the GIS System Administration team for a major US electric and gas distribution utility for several years. Much of my expertise and interest is in architecture design, scalability, high availability, cybersecurity, and cloud services. My past experiences with managing the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) aspect of large-scale GIS deployments have shaped my focus around designing architectures that are easy for my clients to use and maintain.
Today I lead UDC's Enterprise Architecture Service which supports our utility clients by designing, building, deploying, and maintaining enterprise systems that meet performance, reliability, and security needs for successful energy delivery.
MC: Your experience sits at the intersection of GIS and enterprise systems. What are some of the most impactful ways GIS is being used today across utility operations?
WC: More and more, utilities are combining GIS with Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud technologies, and mobile solutions to accomplish work more quickly, consistently, and accurately. The scalability and reliability of cloud services, coupled with the flexibility and spatial accuracy of GIS mobile solutions, have significant and positive impacts on operational workflows like pole inspections, meter disconnects, damage assessments, and many others. Additional benefits can be realized when utilities leverage AI to extract GIS features from photos collected by field crews as well as drone imagery to determine asset conditions and right-of-way encroachments. GIS can also provide consumers with self-service applications to determine where the grid can use additional distributed energy resources (DERs). A connection application can then be filled out and automatically approved or rejected based on the integration results of running the distribution planning system with the new network and load configurations. Using these technologies together can provide significant time and cost savings for utilities.
By integrating the enterprise GIS with existing business systems, utilities can enhance their lines of business, maximize their enterprise technology investments, and more completely support the management and automation of energy delivery on an integrated platform. This can be accomplished through sharing GIS data, integrating business system data with the GIS, building web and field spatial applications that leverage the data from multiple business systems, and leveraging the complete enterprise GIS technology stack as part of operations, to name a few.
MC: With distributed energy resources (DERs) and smart grid technologies becoming more common, how is the role of GIS changing in support of modern grid management?
WC: With the evolution of DERs and smart grid technologies, GIS has brought a whole new perspective to visualizing, analyzing, and reacting to sensor data. For most utilities, GIS has become a System of Record as well as a System of Engagement, and therefore, an integral component alongside other critical systems supporting energy delivery. Positioning the GIS as the foundation for reliability engineering studies for future DERs provides a holistic enterprise approach to grid reliability and electrification. By combining data sources and the results of reliability analysis tools within a unified GIS platform, reliability engineers can obtain a comprehensive view of the grid, enabling them to develop more focused and accurate asset management strategies.
Today's utilities are modernizing and enhancing grid management with geospatial-aware network management solutions, like Esri's ArcGIS Utility Network, to monitor the grid, plan for capacity, analyze consumption, lower emissions, and better protect against cyber threats more efficiently. When integrated with Engineering and Operational systems, GIS provides models that support the systems’ advanced analytics.
MC: What advice do you have for utility teams trying to bridge the gap between IT and OT when developing long-term geospatial or enterprise architecture strategies?
WC: I think a key ingredient to successfully bridging IT and OT is leveraging a common cloud-based integration platform that more easily combines information between systems – GIS included. Utilities should design and deploy GIS-integrated systems with cloud scalability, reliability, and interoperability in mind. This approach provides flexibility and better enables the convergence of legacy and modern systems.
My team provides strategic long-term enterprise architecture approaches that include real-time operational systems, enterprise systems, and communication architecture. These strategies are rooted in industry best practices for well-architected frameworks and enterprise architecture-based methodology.
MC: What are you excited about when it comes to becoming a part of the Energy Central Community? What value do you hope to bring to your peers and what are you hoping you’ll get out from it personally?
WC: I'm excited to hear about the successes and lessons learned that other professionals in the utility industry have experienced from a technology perspective. I hope to further unify GIS and other utility systems through open and spirited collaboration with peers, and I look forward to learning from colleagues about new challenges facing utilities.
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Thanks to William for joining me for this interview and providing a wealth of insights and expertise to the Energy Central Community. You can trust that William will be available for you to reach out and connect and ask questions as an Energy Central member, so be sure to make him feel welcome when you see him across the platform.