Transformation from DMS to ADMS in Power Distribution Utilities: Challenges and Lessons Learned

This paper illustrates the challenges faced and lessons learned during the transformation process in Al Ain Distribution Company (AADC) from Distribution Management System (DMS) to Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) in High Voltage (33kV, 11kV) Power Network Control Center. The old DMS system was commissioned in 2005 and got replaced by advanced distribution management system in 2023/2024. Starting from issues that emerged during system design, configuration, and installation, and extending through system commissioning, testing and parallel operation with the old DMS to the final stage of the ADMS being fully online; the lessons learnt are discussed to provide best practices that can be applied by other utilities to overcome such challenges. The transformation from DMS to ADMS can be generally segregated to three different milestones. Firstly, system upgrade and enhancement requirements like system sizing, modeling of new signals and state of the art equipment. Secondly, getting Advanced features and functionalities requirements of integration with other IT enterprise systems and cyber security requirements. Finally, the project execution requirements of data migration, parallel operation, commissioning and testing. For successful transformation process, the teams shall be made ready to work under pandemic situations (like COVID-19) in hybrid mode instead of complete remote work that negatively impacted the project progress and quality. Integration and modeling of new power equipment like capacitor banks, Distributed Generators (DGs), and storage systems shall be considered to achieve best results of online power applications.