Advanced Distribution Management System: Implementation, Assessment, and Challenges

In recent years, massive numbers of distributed energy resources are being installed in distribution feeders at both the utility and customer levels. These integrations are creating bi-directional power flow complexities in all the existing functionalities of distribution management system (DMS) and outage management system (OMS). Therefore, a significant interest is growing among utilities to combine all the DMS and OMS functionalities with distributed energy resources management system. This combined structure is known as advanced distribution management system (ADMS). In this paper, major ADMS functionalities, such as, conservation voltage reduction, fault location, isolation, and service restoration, and demand response are described with existing and aspiring implementation and assessment. Future challenges are also described from the utility perspective.