Strategic Planning Meets Smart Growth

Union Power Cooperative recently completed a Distribution Saturation Study to ensure its long-range infrastructure planning is aligned with real-world development potential. By analyzing zoning data, future land use plans, and GIS-driven parcel insights, we estimated potential system loads and evaluated them against projected demand.

Using load flow analysis with WindMil by Milsoft, the study revealed that some substations are unlikely to reach future demand projections before saturating existing distribution capacity. These findings are now informing long-term planning decisions—preventing unnecessary infrastructure expansion and better prioritizing new substation locations.

“Long-term distribution planning in high-growth areas must adapt—or risk over engineering for demand that may never materialize.”