Industrial Automation Magazine India

Bentley Systems announces acquisition of SPIDA, leader in utility pole structure management

Published on : Monday 21-06-2021

SPIDA is revolutionising loading and oversight of utility asset analysis and management of structural health.

Exton, Pa., June 2021 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the infrastructure engineering software company, has announced the acquisition of SPIDA Software, developers of specialised software for the design, analysis, and management of utility pole systems. Founded in 2007 in Columbus, Ohio, SPIDA offers modelling, simulation, and data management software solutions to electric and communications utilities, and their engineering services providers, in the US and Canada. The integration of SPIDA within Bentley’s OpenUtilities engineering software and grid digital twin cloud services will help address the challenges of transitioning to new renewable energy sources including for electric vehicle charging, of joint usage of utility poles to support broadband networks’ 5G expansion, and of modernizing and hardening the electric grid to maintain reliability and resilience.

Grid digital twins can provide utilities with immersive and engineering-accurate geospatial representations of their transmission and distribution assets, combining intelligent network and structural analysis with as-operated 3D and 4D physical reality. Bentley’s OpenUtilities grid digital twin solutions enable operators and power producers to evaluate grid trade-offs and opportunities, now spanning traditional and renewable sources and energy storage, as they provision services to meet demand. Digital twins advance asset health management by converging IT, OT, and ET (engineering modelling and simulations) to leverage infrastructure IoT data sources and predictive analytics for improved safety, performance, and reliability. With the incorporation of SPIDA, the reach of grid digital twins can now extend to the utility pole networks and structures, which deliver the environmentally vulnerable “last mile” of critical infrastructure for vital energy and communications.

Leading electric utilities including Ameren, EPCOR, Nashville Electric Service (NES), and Southern California Edison (SCE), engineer the effectiveness and resilience of their overhead systems by applying SPIDA’s software. SPIDA’s utility pole solutions include SPIDAcalc for capturing, modelling, and optimising overhead transmission and distribution assets for structural loading; SPIDAsilk to analyse cable sag and tension design for physical and ambient properties for precise wire tension and conductor installation; and SPIDAstudio, a cloud-based platform that centrally tracks and manages the asset health and physical condition of overhead systems.