Electric System Integration at the Truckee Donner Public Utility District

The Truckee Donner Public Utility District (PUD) provides electric and water service to the town of Truckee. Located in the central Sierra Nevada Mountains, Truckee currently has approximately 15,000 permanent residents but is experiencing rapid growth. Historically, PUD has stored spatial data in individual legacy files and decaying Mylar and paper plots. Three years ago, PUD started the process of converting legacy files into a central geodatabase, integrating spatial and attribute information from several divisions of the enterprise. The geodatabase model provides a central, versioned, spatial data repository; the flexibility to integrate with other platforms; and advanced modeling capabilities.

The GIS department has become an integral hub of the PUD organization. GIS has allowed PUD to integrate customer information, SCADA information, and design specifications with facilities and land base data.

The PUD accomplishes pole analysis using a combination of ESRI GIS, Miner & Miner structural analysis tools, and a custom utility for viewing phase designation on overhead lines that was developed by PUD and POWER Engineers. The GIS stores attribute information from pole inventories and digital photos of all poles, which can be viewed using hyperlinks.

Secondary circuit analysis is accomplished with the ArcFM suite. Analysis tools enable district engineering staff determine the optimal transformer size based on the number of customers served by that transformer. Secondary analysis also helps the engineering staff determine transformers that could be overburdened.

The ArcGIS Schematics extension uses electrical network data to generate online schematic diagrams of electric circuits. Schematic diagrams are useful to engineering staff in system design and to operations staff who use schematic diagrams to determine switching scenarios during outage situations.

Integrating CAD into the geodatabase model has facilitated communication between district staff and the engineering community. Staff can also use existing CAD data and has developed an export utility that quickly and easily exports GIS data to a CAD format.