2026 Event Schedule

American Electric Power (AEP), one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, is organized into seven regulated operating companies (OpCos) that serve nearly 5.6 million customers across 11 states. The ADMS program at AEP presented an opportunity to strengthen standardization across those OpCos for greater efficiency and quality. In addition to integrating SCADA, OMS, and DERMS into a single platform, the project team advised on how to standardize grid operations across AEP’s seven Distribution Dispatch Centers (DDCs) by using ADMS technologies.

Systematic evaluation across the seven DDCs revealed unique insights into the variations in operating practices between different locations. Prior to ADMS, the Indiana & Michigan (I&M) DDC would submit requests to GIS techs to add switch mode indicators to SCADA points on the network model map. The team identified an opportunity to improve efficiency and automated this otherwise slow and manual process. These enhancements were rolled out to all other DDCs, resulting in additional real-time situational awareness. The project identified liaisons at each DDC to act as primary points of contact and assist in change efforts. These efforts resulted in lessons learned that are valuable for other utilities looking to unify their SCADA and OMS systems across multiple regions, namely standards, business processes, and system functionality.