New Zealand's Counties Energy Partners with GE Digital for its Digital Utility Transformation

GE Digital today announced that Counties Energy, an electricity distribution network provider, will implement GE Digital’s Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) as part of its Digital Utility transformation program. The ADMS solution, in combination with the utility’s existing implementation of GE Digital’s Smallworld Electric Office, a network-based Geographic Information System (GIS), will drive greater reliability, resiliency, and flexibility for its network assets through richer multi-source data. Combining the two platforms will enable smarter, sustainable, and innovative energy services and solutions that deliver better customer experiences, operational efficiencies, and the ability to manage growth intelligently, ultimately shaping a future-proofed energy platform.

Servicing one of the fastest-growing areas of New Zealand, Counties Energy is 100% consumer-owned and focused on transforming its network for the low carbon future. “We are committed to creating intergenerational value for our customers by enabling a reliable electricity network and diverse energy choices and offerings,” said Moonis Vegdani, Group General Manager Technology and Digital for Counties Energy.

“Driven by the ambition to deliver an exemplary customer experience, the use of today’s digital capabilities will enhance the efficiency of our day-to-day operations and our long-term investments. We aim to build new digital technologies to transform our existing service delivery, keeping the organisation ahead of the digital curve and delivering good service to our community,” Mr. Vegdani continued.

“Counties Energy is well underway on this important journey with its extensive low voltage visibility through the smart meter network. This ADMS transformation programme with GE Digital as a partner, is a key foundational step towards the next phase of our journey.”

GE Digital’s ADMS solution for Counties Energy combines SCADA, Distribution Management System (DMS), and Outage Management System (OMS) capabilities. The utility will have a single platform to safely interact with its network, control work, and share information in real-time by implementing this solution. In addition, by integrating ADMS and Electric Office, Counties Energy will provide operators with an accurate connected single view of the end-to-end network of assets with a fully digital as-built process flowing from the field to Smallworld Electric Office and on to the ADMS. The company also plans to create a rich picture of its network by utilizing its smart meter coverage to increase the accuracy of the traditional SCADA high and medium voltage view.

Counties Energy intends to leverage the improved knowledge about their physical assets in new and expansive ways. The company can leverage advanced analytics to simulate weather impacts and improve storm preparedness and outage response or understand how the network will behave under different load and future Distribution Energy Resources (DER) growth scenarios.

GE Digital’s Smallworld Electric Office software is a scalable solution with data quality and integrity enforced to support a fully connected, phase aware network model. Electric Office models and manages location and connectivity of electric transmission and distribution (T&D) network assets from generation through consumption and distributed energy resources to provide insights down to the low voltage network.

“Counties Energy is applying innovative technology to further network reliability for their customers and increase resiliency and flexibility for network assets,” said Jim Walsh, General Manager for GE Digital’s Grid Software business. “With these new capabilities, they will enable greater visibility across the network and manage the growth of distributed energy resources so they can lower the carbon footprint needed for energy distribution.”