Military installations commonly lack accurate digitized copies of electrical infrastructure, and “digital twins” with realistic behavioral characteristics are rare. This hinders modernization and resilience planning, operational efficiency, adds costs and uncertainty, and can create safety issues if electrical connections are outdated in paper-based reference documentation or CAD drafts.

This project aims to demonstrate a method and tool to rapidly create a digital twin of electrical networks at several installations. Results will provide direct value to those installations and create generalized value through a “rapid digital twin toolkit” for expanded use across the services, including data and analytics to de-risk the ongoing investment of $3.5B in resilience solutions at 70+ installations.

The project team will demonstrate existing techniques for topology identification, impedance estimation, system characteristics evaluation, and state estimation using a sparse set of meters on a Department of War network to create a digital twin with realistic behavior and functionality that mimics the real system. The approach will be demonstrated on a baseline circuit for a selected installation, with results validated and used to develop of a "rapid digital twin toolkit" to be further demonstrated at 3-5 other installations.  

Accurate representations of electrical infrastructure – static maps and digital models – are needed to improve operations and de-risk planning efforts of microgrids and other resilience solutions. Information on the electric network is rarely comprehensive at installations, even in paper form, and conducting a utilities inventory is often prohibitively expensive and doesn’t generate actionable steps to improve installation resilience. Successful demonstration of this project will provide installations with:

A means to rapidly create a comprehensive digital twin of an installation while also providing:

• an asset inventory,
• time series data on energy use across the network for improved billing,
• high-resolution power quality analyses for disturbances and interconnection studies,
• and further technical data to de-risk ongoing microgrid deployments.

Project deliverables will support fulfillment of federal criteria seeking specific data needs and preliminary design results for funding reviews such as Energy Resilience and Conservation Investment Program and Military Construction.

Technology transfer will include:

• installation network data, one-lines, geographic information system, asset inventories, and technical analysis reports,
• installation digital models aka the “digital twins” for future exploration, modification, and study to aid planning and operations, and
• the “digital twin toolkit”. 

(Anticipated Project Completion - 2028)