June 2019

®
ArcGIS Anchors Grid
Modernization
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 ArcGIS Anchors Grid Modernization

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ........................................................................ 4

Grid Modernization ......................................................................... 5

What Is Grid Modernization? ..................................................................6
Location Is a Common Theme .................................................................6

Grid Modernization Anchored by ArcGIS ..................................... 6

IT and OT Unified into a Single, Coherent Framework ................ 7

ArcGIS Unifies IT and OT ......................................................................9

Spatial Analysis............................................................................... 9
Spatial Analysis Creates Better Insight....................................................10
Imagery Enhances Decision-Making .......................................................10
ArcGIS Utilizes Spatial Analysis.............................................................11

Operational Awareness .................................................................. 11

Key Attributes of a Modern Grid .................................................... 11

Resiliency and Reliability ........................................................................12
Security ....................................................................................................14
Affordability and Flexibility ....................................................................15
Sustainability............................................................................................16

Summary.......................................................................................... 17

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 ArcGIS Enables Grid Modernization

ArcGIS Anchors Grid

Modernization
Executive How are utilities dealing with shrinking revenues, rising costs, and
Summary skyrocketing customer demands while strengthening resiliency? The
answer: create a tougher, smarter, more secure, and healthier grid.
ArcGIS® software can help. It provides understanding, engagement,
and insight into nearly all dimensions of grid operations.
So, what is the problem?
Why are utilities embarking on grid modernization? What's wrong with the grid?
▪ Outages are not uncommon. According to the US Energy Information
Administration (EIA), the duration and frequency of outages are increasing.
Weather is more extreme. These changes create more hazards to the power
system.
• The grid is old. The American Society of Civil Engineers' score for American
energy infrastructure is D+.
▪ Renewable energy is growing fast. EIA projects that renewable energy will grow
to 31 percent of the total US power generation mix by 2050.
▪ Governments deregulated markets. This has created utility business uncertainty.
▪ Utilities are technology dependent. Sensors abound. The grid is vulnerable to
cyber-attacks.
▪ Customers demand better service and value.
These challenges are tough. But they are not insurmountable. They call for changes
in the way utilities operate.
Grid modernization is a call to do things differently.
What's the solution?
There is an adage: If you continue to do what you have always done, you will get
what you have always gotten. If utilities continue to operate as they have done in the
past, they will continue to experience the same problems that have always plagued
them.
Change must happen.
Change involves policy reform and infrastructure investments. It demands a shift in
customer engagement. It will mean hardening the grid. Utilities will change how they
operate a grid where energy supply is at the whim of Mother Nature.
They will transform their use of technology.
Utilities have made substantial investments in technology. Yet the solutions have
largely automated manual processes, creating silos. Siloed systems mask cross-
organizational patterns and decisions. They create suboptimal solutions. They are
costly.
Improvement demands better understanding of grid behavior and customer
expectations. Barriers and silos must be torn down.
Problems and solutions are linked to location.

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Where are outages occurring? Where are obsolete assets? Where are the distributed
energy resources (DERs)? Where are customers using retailers? Where is the grid
subject to cyber-attack? Where is the grid vulnerable? Where are customers
behaving differently?
Geographic information system (GIS) technology has been used in utilities for
decades. However, it has largely been relegated to back-office mapping groups. That
is changing.
ArcGIS is a location intelligence platform. It needs to be a critical element of grid
modernization. Why? Location plays such a dominant role in both the problems and
the solutions facing utilities today.
One strategy to help utilities meet these challenges is to fully leverage ArcGIS in
three ways:
■ Migrate to a real-world model of the
assets in the GIS. Include all parts
of the grid as completely as
possible.
■ Implement a full system of
engagement in which the GIS is
exposed to all stakeholders, inside
and outside the company. Likewise,
use the GIS to consume data from
a variety of internal and external
sources.
■ Fully leverage ArcGIS software's
analytical capabilities. Employ a
system of insight.
ArcGIS is a complete GIS. It is a system
of record, engagement, and insight. It
models the grid to improve risk
assessment. It consumes real-time data
from sensors and social media. That
heightens awareness of threats. It uncovers patterns. This makes for better
investment, security, and operational decisions. It provides immediate situational
awareness. It helps utilities understand customers.
Grid Short-term power failures inconvenience people. Longer-term failures shut down
Modernization businesses, causing revenue loss. Extended outages create havoc and chaos. This
chaos often results in loss of life—sometimes in substantial numbers.
Jobs are lost. People are permanently displaced.
EIA says power failures increased 54 percent between 2013 and 2016. The grid was
based on the weather patterns that existed decades ago. During Superstorm Sandy,
storm water inundated electrical equipment. No one had anticipated this.
For most of its history, power flowed from large, central generating plants. The
balance of supply and consumption was well understood. Not so with solar and wind
power sources. They vary with the weather. As renewable energy produces a
substantial and growing part of the power supply mix, the control of the grid becomes
far more complex.
In many states, utilities no longer own their power plants, nor do they have a direct
relationship to end-use customers. This puts additional pressure on earnings.
Distributed energy resources siphon revenues.

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 ArcGIS Enables Grid Modernization

Utilities are under constant threat of cyber and physical attacks, sometimes in
combination.
Because of these issues, the US Department of Energy (DOE) created the Grid
Modernization Initiative (GMI) just a few years ago.
What Is Grid Modernization?
DOE recognized that
▪ There are too many outages.
▪ The grid is old.
▪ Renewable energy is projected to grow 31 percent from its current level by 2050.
▪ Deregulated markets will increase.
▪ Cyber and physical attacks will continue to be a threat.
▪ Customers expect electricity pricing to be competitive and affordable.
In its GMI 2018 report, DOE stated the following:
"Our extensive, reliable power grid has fueled the nation's growth since the early
1900s. However, the grid we have today does not have the attributes necessary to
meet the demands of the 21st century and beyond."
The DOE further stated what a modern grid must have:
▪ Greater resilience to hazards of all types
▪ Improved reliability for everyday operations
▪ Enhanced security from an increasing and evolving number of threats
▪ Additional affordability to maintain our economic prosperity
▪ Superior flexibility to respond to the variability and uncertainty of conditions at
one or more time scales, including a range of energy futures
▪ Increased sustainability through energy-efficient and renewable resources
Location Is a Common Theme
The traits of a modern grid, as noted above, all have one attribute in common—
location. That suggests that GIS and specifically ArcGIS underpin nearly every grid
modernization measure.
ArcGIS models the grid to improve risk assessment. It reveals where it is best to
invest in resiliency. It consumes real-time data from sensors and social media to
heighten awareness of threats. It uncovers patterns for better investment, security,
and operational decisions. It provides immediate situational awareness. It helps
utilities understand customer behavior. It delivers productivity tools to keep costs
down.
Grid Grid modernization relies heavily on a thorough understanding of the physical
Modernization aspects of the grid. Utilities need to understand the behavior and the vulnerabilities
Anchored by of the grid. ArcGIS provides the means to model the grid in detail. The DOE stated
ArcGIS that the grid must be made resilient, reliable, secure, affordable, flexible, and
sustainable. ArcGIS is the technology to help utilities do that. ArcGIS does this in
three unique ways:
■ Unifies IT and OT into a single coherent framework
■ Leverages spatial analysis
■ Delivers operational awareness

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Figure 1—ArcGIS Enables Grid Modernization

IT and OT Utilities struggle with siloed systems. For example, supervisory control and data
Unified into a acquisition (SCADA) systems only manage real-time information from utility
Single, Coherent monitoring devices and control devices. Those devices include substation
Framework breakers, relays, instruments, and meters.
They do not measure other devices, such as sound, temperature, or wind sensors.
SCADA systems do not consume social media services. Also, SCADA is only
marginally geography based. SCADA abstracts the transmission network to a
schematic representation. It has no knowledge of terrain, earthquake zones, or flood
zones.
Enterprise asset management (EAM)
systems handle the asset life cycle. They
cannot manage assets' spatial relationship
to each other or to other, nonutility assets.
Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)
processes customer consumption. It only
understands customer addresses. It has no
knowledge of the relationship of meters to
the grid. Nor does it know the location of the
communication infrastructure that underpins
the system.
An Advanced Distribution Management
System (ADMS) is geography based. It only
manages the operational model of the
distribution system. It does not have direct
data about the transmission system. Nor
does it manage the structural elements of
the distribution network. It cannot do spatial
analysis.
Utilities perform simulation studies of the electric network. These include load flow,
short-circuit analysis, state estimation, insulation coordination, and stability analysis.
Like SCADA, these systems are schematic based. In most cases, the modeled
devices do not have location information. ArcGIS can consume the results of the
system analysis and combine that data with other system data and services. ArcGIS
brings system analysis to life.
Customer information system (CIS) or customer relationship management (CRM)
technologies have a plethora of information about the customers. This includes their

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ArcGIS Enables Grid Modernization

addresses and consumption patterns. These technologies lack the connection of the
customers to the electrical network. Also lacking is the ability to look at aggregate
customer behavior.
A simple example illustrates how ArcGIS can bring together data from completely
different IT and operational technology (OT) systems.
This example shows how ArcGIS accesses real-time voltage data from a cable
company, then displays that data with electric distribution data from a power
company. ArcGIS could even access voltage complaint data from the company’s
CRM. The external sensors are fiber-to-coax nodes. The dashboard of figure 2
shows the real-time voltage measurements of an electric distribution network. The
electric network data is managed by ArcGIS.
This illustrates how ArcGIS can consume real-time Internet of Things (IoT) data in an
app. It also illustrates the ability to provide spatial analysis and coordination of the
sensors to the electric distribution network. It shows these attributes:

Figure 2—Real-Time Voltage Monitoring Using External Sensors

■ IoT integration—Two distinct sets of data: one being real-time information (from
the sensor network) and one being a system of record from ArcGIS. As noted,
other datasets can be added from other IT systems such as a CRM, AMI or other
services (weather, traffic), or internal OT systems such as an outage
management system.
■ Analysis—ArcGIS can perform spatial analysis not just on data from the GIS but
from all data it consumes, regardless of the source. This is critical. Once a
service is consumed by the ArcGIS platform, that data appears as if it was
maintained and managed by ArcGIS.
■ Awareness—This dashboard can be delivered to anyone in the organization.
Decision-makers in different locations can see what's going on, all at the same
time.
ArcGIS will not replace any IT or OT system. What it will do is bring together OT and
IT systems. It reveals the relationship of one data source to another. ArcGIS can
consume services from outside the utility, such as imagery; weather, lightning,
demographic, crime, and fire reports; and other IoT services into a single
environment.
ArcGIS can bring together data from SCADA (for transmission), ADMS (for
distribution), and customer information (from CRM and AMI). It can add data from
EAM for work locations. It can take all this data and help users visualize and analyze
it—all by location. It truly unifies IT and OT.

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 ArcGIS Supports Grid Modernization

ArcGIS Unifies IT and OT

IT and OT are unified by ArcGIS with the following IoT capabilities:
■ Connects disparate data—ArcGIS consumes data from all kinds of sensors, not
just those of the utility systems. This could include sound, video, temperature,
movement, or wind. The key is that ArcGIS captures the location of the sensor
data, which then can be used in conjunction with other pieces of information.
■ Captures IoT/real time data- ArcGIS represents network devices, including those
from the utility as well as other IoT devices.
■ Exports seamlessly to network analysis- ArcGIS can deliver real-world models to
system analysis tools via web services. It can consume the results. This data can
be combined with information from other OT and IT systems.

Spatial Analysis Once data is collected from a variety of sources, ArcGIS adds significant value
using spatial analytics. Those sources come from real-time sensors and control
systems such as SCADA and ADMS.
Other sources include spatial information from the web through services. This
information also comes from IT systems as noted above. GIS visualizes that data.
However, it does even more. It uncovers patterns and trends that simple visualization
cannot.

Figure 3—Factors Influencing Distribution Vulnerability

Bringing disparate types of data together and showing that data on a map has
substantial value. Figure 3 shows an example of a simplified vulnerability study. The
lines are electrical circuits. They are color coded based on the length of time since
the utility had trimmed the trees around the lines. A red line represents a circuit
segment where the trees had not recently been trimmed around the lines. Green
represents circuits where trees were trimmed recently.
The tree symbols represent tree-related outages. Not shown are areas where
maintenance on the lines is needed.
This map visualizes the data. It is helpful up to a point. The map doesn't fully
represent problem areas so that it's easy to understand.

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Figure 4—Results of the Spatial Analysis

Figure 4 shows the same study results as in figure 3 but after performing a spatial
analysis. The dark red shows the areas of the electric distribution network in which
the trees have not been trimmed for some time, there have been a high number of
tree-related outages, and there are open repair work orders. This clearly illustrates
what areas of the network need attention.
Spatial Analysis Creates Better Insight
That is the value of spatial analysis. It takes as many variables as available,
organizes that data by location, and pinpoints areas of highest vulnerability.
ArcGIS is an information system that enables discovery through spatial
representations and analyses. Its true purpose is to help users gain insights from raw
data. Limiting GIS use to a digital replacement of paper maps constitutes
underutilization—a lost advantage.
Using ArcGIS to find answers to business problems strengthens decision-making and
focuses actions.
An example of spatial analysis in action is how utilities can use spatial analysis to
better understand their underground system. Certainly, a utility can use ArcGIS to
document its underground cables. It can gain more value by using ArcGIS to discover
which cables are most likely to fail. Spatial analysis can help a utility answer the
question, where could a single event have the most devastating impact on the
network?
ArcGIS can answer this query with a simple map output, showing a large red polygon
around the most vulnerable network section. The utility can then mitigate risk there—
saving money and better serving customers. ArcGIS improves safety by highlighting
danger zones. It ensures that the utility stays out of the news (when cables fail or
catch on fire or propel manhole covers into the air.)
Imagery Enhances Decision-Making
Utilities underutilize imagery. Imagery in the form of lidar, orthophotos, and phodar
provide additional insight into the impacts on the network. Image processing
strengthens the already powerful insight of spatial analysis.
ArcGIS has the most advanced image processing capability anywhere. By analyzing
the spectrum of leaves, utilities can determine the health and the species of trees.
Seeing clusters of unhealthy trees can raise concerns because dying trees signal a

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potential fire hazard. ArcGIS can then determine how close critical electric facilities
are to the hazardous trees.
ArcGIS Utilizes Spatial Analysis
Spatial analysis is used by ArcGIS with the following capabilities:
■ Assesses risk—Network risk that is risk of a network failure equals vulnerability
plus consequences. Spatial analysis considers both. ArcGIS consumes data from
many sources. This includes load flow, short-circuit, and stability studies. It uses
statistics, science, and big data analytics to focus where vulnerability exists.
ArcGIS then examines where that vulnerability will have the greatest negative
impact on the network and the community it serves.
■ Processes imagery—ArcGIS processes images to provide insight into the
surrounding environment. Using spectral analysis, it can uncover issues hidden
from the naked eye.
■ Provides machine learning and big data analytics—In combination with imagery
and video, ArcGIS can uncover imminent failures. Using machine learning,
utilities can scan millions of devices in seconds to locate dangers lurking in their
network.

Operational Solid decision-making is difficult without thorough operational awareness.

Awareness Awareness happens in three ways.
First, awareness requires immediate information—what data is available right now.
Second, it comes from analysis—what the data means. The third is from data access
and dissemination—gaining that intelligence and getting it to everyone at the same
time.
A utility is a complex operation. There are a variety of assets, customers, and
workers distributed over vast areas. The assets are connected and related. ArcGIS
can add layers of information. Examples include external factors such as weather,
terrorism, crime, traffic, fires, and earthquakes. ArcGIS puts all these elements
together to give utilities outstanding operational awareness.
Operational awareness comes about by
■ Bridging the gap between OT and IT.
■ Consuming unlimited spatial information.
■ Providing spatial analysis.
■ Visualizing the results.
■ Delivering those results to all stakeholders.
ArcGIS Delivers operational awareness with these capabilities:
■ Visualizes the real time network—An electrical network is a complex system. It
has millions of elements. ArcGIS assembles information from virtually any
source.
■ Delivers deep information insight—ArcGIS consumes information from literally
any source, including data from smart cities, from other utilities, and from
imagery and traffic services. This provides the context to answer the question
about what is going on right now in the network.
■ Presents to any device—ArcGIS delivers operational awareness regardless of
the device or situation.

Key Attributes of Resiliency and reliability require a thorough knowledge of the behavior of the grid.
a Modern Grid A secure grid requires a deep understanding of the threats, both physical and
cyber. Utilities will adopt technology for improved productivity. Customers demand
affordability and flexibility. Society has embraced sustainability.

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ArcGIS Enables Grid Modernization

Location information is critical to [understanding grid behavior. Thus, the

implementation of ArcGIS is key to successfully moving utilities to modernization.
ArcGIS provides heightened grid understanding by unifying IT and OT. It uncovers
threats, vulnerabilities, and lapses in productivity, with spatial analysis. Finally, it
liberates utilities from having to assimilate information from many disparate sources,
giving utilities keen operational awareness.
Resiliency and Reliability
ArcGIS provides answers to the basic question of where the network is at risk. It
shows the relationship of assets to each other. It understands the relationship of
networks to their surroundings.
Consequently, it is essential for restoring power, storm tracking, and security
monitoring. Leveraging real-time information, machine learning, big data, and
analytics, GIS gives utilities the answers they need to harden the grid in the most
vulnerable areas.
A recent paper, A Customer-Focused Framework for Electric System Resilience by
Alison Silverstein, Rob Gramlich, and Michael Goggin of Grid Strategies, examines
both resiliency and reliability.
In the paper, the authors state, "Power system reliability and resilience are deeply
intertwined—reliability covers those long-term and operational steps that reduce the
probability of power interruptions and prevent loss of customer load, while resilience
measures reduce damage from outages and hasten restoration and recovery to
shorten outage durations."
Reliability is deeply involved in analysis. Reliability engineers assess where damage
or failure is most likely to occur. Failure is often a combination of several factors,
most involving location. That might include the location and age of assets and their
maintenance and failure history. Natural causes include storms, lightning, fires, wind,
fallen trees, soil conditions, vegetation, and animal damage.
Resiliency measures result from reliability analysis. These measures include
mitigation of those factors utilities can control. They also include measures that
protect their assets from events they can't control.

Figure 5—Reliability Analyses Using Insights for ArcGIS

This example uses Insights for ArcGIS in ArcGIS a user-friendly framework for quick
spatial analysis. It leverages big data analytics to allow large volumes of data to be
analyzed and visualized quickly. The data for figure 5 was based on 18 months of
outage data with 55 million event data points. The bubbles indicate clusters of
failures.

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Figure 6—Heat Map Showing Density of Failures

Figure 6 shows the data in figure 5, represented as a heat map. This map shows that
the pattern of failures is heavily focused in one area. This type of analysis gives
utilities added insight into why failures occur in certain areas and not in others.
Utilities then can add more data. This data includes proximity of environmental
factors, such as moisture and smokestack emissions, to help uncover reasons for the
cluster of equipment failures.
The analysis using Insights for ArcGIS uncovered patterns that could not be
determined by simple tabular analysis. This helps utilities develop the probability of
failure. A risk analysis follows. It identifies areas of high vulnerability, which would be
most likely to have the greatest impact.
Making the Right Resilience Decision
Once staff have information from the reliability analysis, they begin resilience
measures. Figure 7 illustrates an interesting analysis of an area that has recently
experienced a fire and is fire prone.

Figure 7—An Illustration of a Fire Zone Overlay in a Utility Network

The utility must develop resilience measures to help lessen the fire damage.
Measures include insulating conductors or hardening the network with higher and
stronger poles. The utility can proactively trim trees and treat brush to stifle growth.
Figure 8 gives a somewhat different example. In this case, fallen trees were causing
most of the outages for this utility. This figure shows the reliability analysis. The
resilience measure was dead tree removal. The results were a dramatic improvement

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in tree-related outages and a substantial improvement in overall reliability. In this

case, the utility accessed available web services as input analysis.

Figure 8—Spatial Analysis for Dead/Fallen Tree Risk

In this example, ArcGIS accessed millions of maps from the web and incorporated
them directly into the utility's GIS.
Consider another example. A utility suspects that a piece of equipment might have
sustained flood damage. Staff takes flood information from one of the many
published web services. They overlay web service maps onto the utility's facilities
data in ArcGIS. This visualizes where equipment is at risk of inundation during a
flood. Spatial analysis highlights the risk. The utility publishes this risk map as its own
web service. It then can be consumed by anyone with a web browser. This is a vast
improvement over the old way of trying to overlay potentially outdated floodplain
printouts onto facility data.
This reliability analysis indicates the probability of failure or damage due to flooding.
The resilience measure would be to relocate equipment, raise the equipment on
platforms, build flood control structures or simply install sandbags.
Resiliency also involves measures to shorten outages during events. Here situational
awareness is critical.
Spatial Analysis Reveals Greater Insight into Reliability
ArcGIS visualizes the grid in relation to its surroundings. ArcGIS monitors the health
of the grid. It shows where there are sensors that have failed to report results in the
last hour. It creates physical and network relationships. It establishes a real-time view
of the grid. It can note where things are changing.
It shows the complete state of the grid, represented by a realistic model in a way that
people understand.
While standard reliability metrics such as SAIDI, SAIFI, and MAIFI are helpful,
ArcGIS reveals the customers' view of their utility's reliability. A good US SAIDI (less
than 2 hours) could apply to a utility that has pockets of territory with poor service
reliability.
Better modeling of assets delivers greater accuracy in reliability analysis. It increases
the utility's confidence in resilience measures.
Security
Among the greatest threats today to the grid are cyber and physical attacks. The
good news is that devices—from large transformers to the tiniest of sensors—are all

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becoming smarter. They can communicate the grid's health. The bad news is that
these very same devices become targets for cyber-attack. No single system is as
effective as ArcGIS to assess the relationship of these devices to other aspects of the
grid. ArcGIS knows where every sensor is located and what it should be seeing.

Figure 9—Linking the Physical and Logical Networks

Utilities may not be able to prevent a cyber-attack from occurring. But they can
establish a plan for identifying the impact of the attack. Then they can plan for
minimizing the damage.
The Physical and Logical Asset Relationships
The key to an effective cyber-attack plan is to link the physical network (and assets)
to the logical assets, as shown in figure 9.
At the heart of any cybersecurity program is the recognition of the relationship
between the physical cyber devices and their logical connection to operations.
ArcGIS creates schematics on the fly, directly from the data in the geodatabase.
As utilities add sensors, control devices, and communication devices, they can create
a geographic link to each of them. Then they align these to the utility devices that
they monitor and control. The first task is to create an inventory of each cyber device
(sensor, fault indicator, relay) and its relationship to the others. This can be done
easily with the new ArcGIS Utility Network Management extension.
This technology gives utilities the ability to create separate cyber network
geodatabases with geographic and logical representations. It has the capability to
link this network to the electrical networks as well. These networks can share a
structural network. For example, a sensor and a switch exist on the same pole. The
sensor network and the electric network can be linked logically.
ArcGIS provides the tools to effectively capture the location of cyber assets, using a
variety of field apps.
Affordability and Flexibility
ArcGIS determines the best locations for components. It uses spatial analysis.
Utilities need spatial analysis to figure out the right locations for their devices. ArcGIS
provides a spatial context to the analytics and metrics of grid modernization. It saves
time and money.
Socializing GIS
One of the simplest ways for utilities to decrease costs is in the use of mobility for
fieldworkers. Many utilities continue to print the maps from their GIS for use by
fieldworkers. Other utilities have attempted to replicate their desktop GIS functionality
in one-size-fits-all applications. ArcGIS provides simple tools and templates that tailor
field applications to the task at hand.

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Figure 10 illustrates a simple task-based app. After a storm, utilities must perform a
comprehensive damage assessment. The assessors might be office workers
dispatched for that task only. They can be equipped with tablets with simple forms to
complete that would illustrate the location and extent of the damage. Figure10 is a
simple configuration of Esri's Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS, which collects the
data from damage assessors in real time. It's simple, affordable, and flexible.

Figure 10—Operations Dashboard Used in Damage Assessment

Another example of affordability is the application illustrated in figure 11. This app is
another configuration of Operations Dashboard. The app shows streetlights reported
as being out or damaged. In this case, the streetlights have been reported by
customers using a self-service app. This app increases the speed of streetlight
outage reporting and repair. These apps also can access popular social media
feeds—Twitter, Facebook, and others. So, reporting streetlight outages can be done
via social media as well, increasing flexibility and affordability. It also enhances
customer satisfaction.
Sharing Data
The information can be shared with other utility IT and OT platforms.

Figure 11—Streetlight Reporting Dashboard

Sustainability
ArcGIS supports renewable resources. It is used for land management, solar
radiation density, wind density, and geothermal analysis. It is critical that utilities
carefully model the location and attribution of all distributed energy resources. In the
very near future, utilities and other entities will model DER financial transactions
using technologies such as blockchain. ArcGIS is the software to help in the records
management, visualization and analysis of this new utility business model.
ArcGIS has served as the foundation for planning, building, and operating renewable
resources. Figure 12 shows the solar radiation densities in a proposed development.

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Figure 12—Solar Development Analysis Using ArcGIS Pro

The Third Dimension

Figure 13 illustrates the 3D modeling capability in ArcGIS. In this example,
developers can propose a new wind farm project, using models of the wind turbines.
They can place the wind turbines and evaluate their effectiveness. They can further
model their operations by simulating wind resources from historic wind patterns
consumed by web services. Once the wind farm is built, ArcGIS is used to combine
real-time wind and production data to model the wind farm's operational
effectiveness. Finally, using Operations Dashboard, utilities can create full
operational awareness of the wind farms’ behavior.

Figure 13—3D Representation of Wind Turbines, Using ArcGIS Pro

Summary The key attributes of the modern grid include location. Where are resiliency and
reliability issues? Where are vulnerabilities and threats? Where are areas of losses
or productivity improvements? Where should conservation and renewable
resources be applied?
Now is the time to take advantage of the advanced capabilities of ArcGIS. It's time to
bring disparate data from IT and OT systems together. Time to see patterns using
spatial analysis. Time to see what is happening on the grid right now and create true
operational awareness. Utilities need a detailed model of the network assets—a fully
accurate and complete model of their assets as they appear on the ground. They
need to break down silos of technology and processes. Finally, utilities need to fully
understand grid risk.
To fully anchor grid modernization, utilities need ArcGIS. It partners with utilities to
build a resilient, reliable, affordable, secure, flexible, and sustainable grid.

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