Meridian Power Utility: Cutting Outage Minutes a Third Through Distribution Automation and DERMS

The Problem

Meridian Power Utility, a mid-sized investor-owned utility serving roughly 900,000 customers, was experiencing rising outage minutes despite steady capital investment, driven by aging feeder protection equipment and a distribution planning process that had not kept pace with rapidly growing rooftop solar and EV charging penetration.

Voltage excursions on high-solar feeders were becoming a recurring operational problem, and the utility's existing SCADA and outage management systems provided limited real-time visibility into distributed energy resource behavior at the feeder edge.

Our Solution

The Archive Co conducted a feeder-by-feeder distribution system assessment, prioritizing 40 feeders with the highest combination of outage history and DER penetration for an initial DERMS and automation deployment.

We designed and implemented a DERMS platform integrated with Meridian's existing SCADA and outage management systems, enabling voltage-VAR optimization using smart inverter reactive power capability and coordinated fault location, isolation, and service restoration automation across the prioritized feeders.

A parallel workstream rebuilt Meridian's distribution planning process to incorporate hosting capacity analysis directly into interconnection screening and capital planning, replacing the utility's prior generic screening thresholds.

Timeline

Diagnostic & Feeder Prioritization

6 weeks — data review, feeder scoring, prioritization workshop

DERMS Platform Design & Integration

4 months — architecture, SCADA/OMS integration design, vendor selection support

Phase 1 Deployment (12 feeders)

5 months — automation and DERMS commissioning, control room training

Phase 2 Rollout (28 feeders)

6 months — scaled deployment, hosting capacity process rollout

Performance Review

Ongoing — quarterly outage and hosting capacity performance tracking

Results

Customer outage minutes (SAIDI) across the 40 prioritized feeders fell 31 percent within eighteen months of full deployment, compared to a 6 percent improvement across the rest of Meridian's service territory over the same period.

Automated fault location, isolation, and service restoration reduced average outage duration for faults on automated feeders by roughly 40 percent by eliminating manual feeder switching steps.

Published hosting capacity maps increased developer-visible interconnection capacity on prioritized feeders and reduced average interconnection study turnaround time.