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Claire King
Claire King
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The Modern Grid Management Journey at CORE

One of the largest electric distribution cooperatives in the US, CORE Electric Cooperative has met a milestone on its journey to modern grid management. The utility has finalized a roadmap for deploying its advanced distribution management system (ADMS) and distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) integrations and technologies. Using a phased business release (BR) approach, CORE can actively manage the functionality deployments throughout the implementation process, ensuring that the organization and its members are fully supported on the utility’s path to grid modernization.

Grid Modernization Goals

The goals associated with CORE’s initiative to make its grid more resilient and efficient include improving outage response and operations, supporting renewable energy connections for cooperative members, enhancing customer demand response programs, and leveraging more advanced paradigms for condition-based asset management. However, like other electric distribution utilities, CORE is facing the dynamic challenges around identifying, prioritizing, and planning the integrations needed for operating an advanced power grid.

The recently developed ADMS and DERMS Roadmap is helping the utility to meet these challenges head on by strategically ordering the operation and information technology integrations required for managing a modern grid into BRs, based on CORE’s priorities. With this guidance, CORE is ensuring successful ADMS and DERMS implementations for its organization and future grid management.

Developing the Roadmap

A top-down methodology was employed to develop the roadmap and BR schedule.

Phase One: UDC first built out the overall project strategy based on input from CORE’s stakeholders which helped identify the ADMS and DERMS technologies required to manage the future grid.

Phase Two: ADMS industry experts expanded on industry trends and current practical solutions.

Phase Three: UDC conducted detailed assessments of the utility’s legacy business processes, technology, in-flight initiatives, and business environment to identify where CORE currently is and what is needed to help CORE manage a modern grid.

Phase Four: The deliverables from the previous tasks were consolidated to develop the roadmap. Within the roadmap, UDC identified quick wins, solutions, and potential long-term investments; detailed how to leverage legacy technologies for future growth; and defined feature metrics and key milestones for overall implementation. This analysis introduced additional BRs to address customer demand response and advanced asset management leveraging the new ADMS and distribution automation (DA) deployments.

Incremental Approach

A BR deployment approach enables CORE to map its target system functionalities into defined steps that support its specific grid modernization needs, with each release building on the previous set of functionalities in a predictable fashion. As a result, CORE can continually refine the functionality requirements as the integrations are deployed through smaller-scale releases. This flexibility empowers CORE to make informed decisions for its organization and members throughout the implementation process for each functionality.

Leveraging the Roadmap

Each release consists of an individual schedule and high-level budgets for the system functionalities provided by most ADMS vendors. Equipped with these metrics, CORE can easily use the roadmap as a foundation for driving possible vendor selection and future solution implementation. Additionally, the roadmap milestones can be used to provide a basis for future RFP requirements.

Validating the ADMS for Safety

CORE is building the levels of system automation progressively to validate the ADMS at routine intervals before the fully automated closed loop processing assumes control of the grid. Through this approach, the utility is forming a strong foundation and model for the future while also safeguarding its members and grid from power disruptions.

Optimizing Legacy Investments

The roadmap incorporates steps that enable CORE to maximize its current technologies and programs, such as activating software modules within the utility’s existing outage management system (OMS), saving the utility future implementation costs and time through an accelerated plan.

The roadmap leverages these in-flight initiatives that will streamline the ADMS deployment:

  1. Enablement of the utility’s legacy advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to be used for ADMS communications with advanced line sensor devices installed along each phase of the feeders.
  2. Upgrade of the GIS to Esri’s ArcGIS Utility Network Management System.

By incorporating these initiatives into CORE’s grid modernization plan, the utility will be better prepared to support daily ADMS model build processes through GIS daily as-builts.

ADMS and DERMS Roadmap Components:

The aspects of the ADMS and DERMS Roadmap project include:

  • Analyzing current and long-term business drivers for implementing ADMS and DERMS
  • Assessing existing distribution applications and operations
  • Developing future business process workflows
  • Conducting business process impact assessments
  • Defining solution architecture for overall system-to-system architecture internally and externally among other CORE systems
  • Providing relative ordering of ADMS and DERMS functionality for each BR
  • Incorporating reference solution architecture models of applicable utility workflows
  • Offering strategies that maximize performance before, during, and after implementation
  • Identifying gaps and developing a mitigation plan

Implementing an incremental approach to ADMS and DERMS is helping CORE reach its grid modernization goals in the most strategic way for its organization and members.

 

About CORE

Headquartered in Sedalia, Colorado, CORE Electric Cooperative serves close to 170,000 members along Colorado’s front range. CORE’s service area covers 5,000 square miles and includes 7 geographic districts.

About UDC

UDC partners with utility and infrastructure companies to solve their business challenges by providing full lifecycle project and program support. Connect with our team to talk about your utility’s ADMS readiness and UDC’s utility enterprise roadmap services.

 

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