topic Re: Power Outage Trace in ArcGIS Utility Network Questions

Power Outage Trace

Joshua_Moreno — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:52:08 GMT

Looking to create a power outage trace configuration for our Electrical team. Our goal is to be able to see what customer meters are affected and trace that back to the source, whether it's the transformer that is feeding these customers or all the way up to the circuit source at the substation.

How would I set this up using a custom trace configuration, what params, etc? Primarily for our field crew to conduct the proper steps to get power back to the affected customers when an outage is reported. Would I be able to select an affected customer as a starting point and trace from there?

Re: Power Outage Trace

RobertKrisher — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:59:27 GMT

Yes. An upstream trace will give you the path back to the circuit breaker, an isolation trace can get you the protective equipment and/or customers affected by the outage. Read the Isolating failures using ArcGIS Utility Network article for examples of how to do this. The article is written using water data but swap out pipes for conductors and fuses/switches for valves, and it should all line up.

Re: Power Outage Trace

Joshua_Moreno — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:03:08 GMT

Awesome, thank you so much!

Re: Power Outage Trace

Joshua_Moreno — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 23:28:42 GMT

For some reason, when I followed the article, when selecting a service meter and trying to run an isolating trace using it as a starting point, I keep getting: "No valid subnetwork controllers found. The operation was attempted on an empty geometry." But when using a default or custom upstream or downstream trace, it gives me no errors using the same starting point. Any idea why this may be happening? Thank you

Re: Power Outage Trace

RobertKrisher — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:45:29 GMT

Use the same trace configuration you would use for your other traces, then add a filter barrier for isolation equipment.

Can you show the trace configuration you are using?