Hierarchical Tiers for Electric Distribution Network?

[EstherSmith_Dev]

Hi,

I have a question about the exact differences between Partitioned and Hierarchical tiers.

I have a read all the documentation and numerous threads here.

The documentation at https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/utility-network/tiers.htm shows the differences with nice graphics. However, it mentions that 

• Partitioned—Supports systems that are sequential in nature, such as electrical and telecommunications utilities
• Hierarchical—Allows you to model networks that are nested, such as gas and water networks

Does it mean that electric and telco networks have to choose Partitioned and gas/water have to choose Hierarchical?

The graphics for "partitioned" tier shows only "radial" network while graphics for "hierarchical" tier shows "mesh" network. But the same document says 

• Radial—Consists of one or more subnetwork controllers
• Mesh—Consists of one or more subnetwork controllers

Note:

The topology type currently does not provide a difference in behavior for tracing or subnetwork management. The functionality is under development and will be applicable in a future release.

(Curiously, above note is present from day-1 of the UNM model documentation)

So, apart from hierarchical tier having multiple subnetwork name attributes and asset belonging to more than one tier at the same time, what is the difference?

In Electric Network, we have a need for EHV, HV and LV tiers (standard Australian model). And we need to denote each LV asset with EHV, HV and LV tier it belongs to. One way is to define the model as 

1. "Electric" domain,
   • "Electric Distribution" hierarchical tier group
     • "EHV" tier with rank 1 and EHVSubnetworkName attribute
     • "HV" tier with rank 2 and HVSubnetworkName attribute
     • "LV" tier with rank 3 and LVSubnetworkName attribute

Then by identifying any LV asset such as electric meter, user knows which transformer it is fed from (LV tier's Subnetwork Controller), which feeder it belongs to (HV tier's SNC) and which zone/terminal transformer it is sourced from (EHV tier's SNC). For HV assets, LVSubnetworkName will be empty/unknown.

Will I lose or compromise any UNM functionality if I configure Electric Distribution Network like above? Is the performance of UNM editing, tracing upstream/downstream, running Update Subnetwork impacted?

Thanks,

[PierreloupDucroix]

Hello,

for your information, we managed to create an electric distribution UN with Hierarchical tiers.

- 1 tier for MV

- 1 tier for LV

- 1 tier for Street Lighting (SL)

The particularity of the network is that SL is "nested" inside LV and can "jump" from pure SL to LV+SL. Ex : some LV cable can have 3 LV conductors + 1 SL conductor, and both LV and SL can have a shared neutral or not. LV and SL may also not have the same subnetwork controller.

Here is a simple schematic to explain :

As the conductors are not modeled, we had to implement hierarchical tiers to model such a network.

We also make phase and voltage propagation on the MV and LV subnetworks.

Everything works great, the application is on production. But I have been warned by Esri (Rob. Krisher) that there might be issues regarding subnet calculation et update performances. So far so good, the network is pretty small with less than 100k customer points.