2027 Event Agenda

Strategic Goal
The strategic goal of this course is to enable participants to deliver reliable, real-time, end-to-end electrical network models that serve as a true digital twin—empowering utility planners, engineers, and operators across transmission, distribution (primary and secondary), customer meters, and substation internals. Because accurate, unified models directly reduce operational risk, accelerate decision-making, and unlock measurable efficiency gains enterprise-wide, this capability has become non-negotiable for utilities operating in today’s complex grid environment.

The Critical Challenge
Stakeholder needs overlap yet diverge sharply in scope, urgency, and update frequency. Network data fragments across planning, GIS, EMS, ADMS, engineering design, asset management, work management, and outage systems—each applying its own proprietary representations, often requiring costly transformations (including bus-branch conversions). The result? Misaligned models that erode trust, inflate costs, delay projects, and compromise reliability.

Core Requirements for NNMS Success

• Full asset-lifecycle support—from planning and design through construction, commissioning, operations, maintenance, and retirement.
• A single, vendor-neutral network model as the authoritative source of truth.
• Seamless integration of equipment data, topology, SCADA measurements, customer service points, equivalent sources, loads, ratings, and limits.
• Built-in data validation and quality assurance to eliminate downstream errors.
• Automated transformation and publication into target formats (e.g., PSS/E, Synergi, CYME).
• Versioned models reflecting current, future, and historic states—including switch positions.
• Auto-generation of accurate one-line schematics for operations and SCADA/EMS/ADMS displays.

These requirements are not optional enhancements; they are the foundational enablers of modern utility performance.

Dissecting Persistent Data-Alignment Problems
Systems often prioritize physical assets, geographic relationships, or electrical connectivity in isolation. Node-breaker versus bus-branch representations create further friction across planning, operations, and protection. Data-in-motion (integration) models clash with data-at-rest stores, while reference-data harmonization remains elusive. This session exposes these exact failure modes and equips participants with proven reconciliation strategies—because unresolved misalignment is one of the largest hidden drags on utility productivity today.

Building a Robust Strategy and Master Plan
Participants will evaluate commercial off-the-shelf options against enterprise objectives, avoiding the pitfalls of fragmented implementations. Using the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61968-1 Interface Reference Model, the course demonstrates how to achieve architectural resilience without sacrificing flexibility or control. This is the high-ground approach that forward-looking utilities adopt to stay ahead of regulatory, reliability, and cost pressures.

Leveraging Industry Standards for Resilient Interfaces and Analytics
Model-driven design, anchored in the utility Common Information Model (CIM), eliminates the classic alignment failures that plague most organizations. The session walks through the CIM packages proven to resolve network-data conflicts, giving attendees a ready-to-apply framework rather than abstract theory. Because CIM is the internationally recognized lingua franca for utility data exchange, mastering it positions utilities for seamless interoperability and future-proof analytics.

Making the Business Case and Executing the Plan
Clear, quantifiable justification—operational excellence, risk reduction, and financial return—combined with practical roadmaps that neutralize common obstacles. Attendees leave with a complete playbook: benefits, barriers, and phased implementation steps grounded in real utility experience.

Course Agenda
• 1:00 – Introduction & Meet-and-Greet
• 1:15 – NMMS: What It Is
  ◦ Asset Lifecycle as Digital Twin
  ◦ Unique Enterprise Challenges
• 2:15 – NMMS: Why It Matters
  ◦ Business Operations Impact
  ◦ Enterprise Data Management Value
  ◦ Financial and Strategic Returns
• 2:30 – Break
• 2:40 – NMMS: How to Succeed
  ◦ Strategic Roadmap & Business Case Development
  ◦ Proven Architecture Patterns
  ◦ Successful Project Implementation: Ameren
• 3:45 – EPRI Update
  ◦ GMDM Phase II Supplemental Research Outcomes
  ◦ Vendor Forum Insights
• 4:15 – Real-World Utility Experience: Ameren
• 4:45 – Wrap-Up and Key Takeaways

Why This Session Belongs on the Conference Program
In an industry racing toward digital twins, distributed energy resources, and tighter regulatory scrutiny, fragmented network models remain a silent barrier to progress. This session delivers authoritative guidance, standards-based solutions, and a live utility case study—exactly the forward-looking, high-ROI content conference attendees demand and reviewers seek to feature.