Is your ADMS helping or hindering your storm resilience?

Utilities tend to fall into two patterns during storms: those without ADMS that rely on disconnected systems during large adverse weather events, and those with ADMS that still manage storms through tickets, phone calls, and manual hand-offs. In both cases, the result is the same: slower restoration when it matters most.

In 2024, US electricity customers experienced an average of 11 hours of interruptions – nearly twice that of the previous decade. The impact shows up in higher costs, greater regulatory scrutiny, and visible customer disruption.

Major storms drove much of the increase, with Hurricanes Beryl, Helene, and Milton leaving millions without power and underscoring the challenge of restoring services across large areas. Often, traditional restoration models simply can’t keep up. ADMS, though, offers an answer.

When ADMS matters most

Many utilities still depend on ticket-based dispatch, paper packages, phone calls, and disconnected systems during major events. Lack of cohesion and flexibility quickly leads to overwhelm, hindering the speed and success of restoration.

However, during storms, ADMS can become the central operating layer for restoration. It brings together capabilities that often sit in separate systems into one view of the network. When connected with application management interfaces (AMI) and workforce systems, ADMS helps utilities see current conditions and coordinate the response in real-time. This visibility matters every day, but is especially important during storms. But what does successful ADMS look like? Which features are fundamental to fast, effective service restoration?

Faster decision-making and sequencing

When crews wait for instructions, drive to the wrong asset, or call in for status checks, productivity drops. ADMS improves utilization by connecting field work to current network conditions. It supports more accurate assignments, better task sequencing, and faster verification when work is complete. In a storm, this can increase restoration capacity without adding more trucks.

The most effective ADMS allows crews and dispatchers to work from real-time information instead of waiting for manual updates. By integrating AMI into their ADMS, utilities can improve outage detection and damage assessment. Automated switching order generation can also help to create safe restoration sequences faster, while dynamic prioritization can focus on the work that restores the most customers or critical facilities first. The result? Less time between fault detection and resolution.

Stronger safety – at scale

As more crews enter the field, the risk of uncoordinated switching actions and safety issues increases. That risk is even higher when mutual aid crews are unfamiliar with local processes.

Utilities can ensure that ADMS helps maintain control by building-in the functionality to show active switching authorities, flag conflicts, and alert teams when safety clearances are nearing expiration. With ADMS, utilities can expand field activity while keeping safety discipline intact.

Importantly, to maintain that control during storms, ADMS should be configured to enforce safe switching practices, validate clearance and isolation steps in real time, and embed regulatory and operating constraints directly into restoration workflows.

Stronger coordination through integration

ADMS alone doesn’t change outcomes. Utilities need to redesign the processes and operating models that sit around it. The biggest gains come when ADMS is fully embedded – when restoration work is planned, assigned, coordinated, and verified as part of the whole system, rather than a technology bolt-on.

Via ADMS, utilities can avoid control room overwhelm during large weather events by extending core functionality to remote dispatch centers and staging sites. This means that decisions don’t have to flow through one control room – allowing regional teams to manage assigned territories, update network models, execute switching plans, and coordinate work. This functionality also helps utilities to coordinate external crews during major events, providing internal and external teams with a common operating model.

From chaos to control

As adverse weather events intensify, utilities that depend on outdated, manual coordination will find it much harder to weather the storms. Utilities that operationalize and embed ADMS as a core part of their organization will restore services at pace, and retain control. The question isn’t whether a utility has ADMS or not – this is now expected. The real differentiator is whether the organization can reliable depend on ADMS when it matters most.