Hi community,
We are currently working through subnetwork modeling decisions that span across Distribution, Transmission and Substation tiers in a Utility Network implementation. We wanted to reach out to the community to understand how others have handled this — particularly around substation subnetwork configuration.
Our core questions:
- Is anyone modeling multiple subnetworks within a single substation?
- Is anyone modeling substation subnetworks in a way that supports true end-to-end tracing — from a transmission circuit, through the substation, all the way down to impacted customers?
To provide context, the Transmission Terminal serves as the connection point where a transmission circuit terminates at a substation, acting as the start and end point of a transmission line. However, in some substations the connectivity extends beyond the terminal, travelling through to the substation transformer via the primary bus. Since the subnetwork controller for transmission encompasses all terminals within the circuit, fixed start and end point designations are not considered functionally significant.
In a substation, multiple devices are connected to the primary bus of a Transmission Terminal, and determining which device acts as the subnetwork controller is critical for accurate network tracing and isolation.
Additionally by end-to-end tracing we mean that if a transmission circuit upstream of a substation needs to be traced, can an analyst trace through the substation subnetwork and identify downstream customers? This level of granularity is what we are working towards, and getting the subnetwork controller configuration right — for Distribution, Transmission and Substation tiers — is critical to making it work.
If you have implemented something like this, we'd love to understand:
- What Features, Asset Groups (AG), and Asset Types (AT) are you using as Transmission tier subnetwork controllers?
- What Features, Asset Groups (AG), and Asset Types (AT) are you using as Substation tier subnetwork controllers?
- Are there any modeling pitfalls or lessons learned you'd flag for someone setting this up?
We want to make sure our approach aligns with community best practices.
would also appreciate any guidance from the Esri side on how this is typically approached.Thanks in advance!
@RobertKrisher @MikeMillerGIS