Topological Quality and Fitness-for-Use Screening of a Low-Voltage Network Derived from a Utility Geographic Information System: A Real-World Distribution Utility Case Study

Abstract

The availability of reliable digital models of low-voltage (LV) networks is a prerequisite for operation, planning, hosting-capacity, and asset-management studies. In practice, however, utility geodatabases often contain geometric discontinuities, implicit relationships among assets, and incomplete connectivity, which hinders their direct use as topological models for electrical studies. This work proposes a reproducible framework for topological-quality and fitness-for-use screening, applied to a real LV network derived from a utility geographic information system (GIS). The methodology converts geospatial layers into a graph representation, audits load-to-pole and endpoint-to-known-node distances, evaluates structural sensitivity to the endpoint connection tolerance, computes a load-level screening confidence score, characterizes transformer-level coverage under an explicit demand scenario, and evaluates structural sensitivity under synthetic perturbations of the line geometry. The case study comprises 38 urban blocks, 155 poles, 13 distribution transformers, 429 loads, 777 overhead LV segments, and 23 underground LV segments. The mean load-to-pole distance is 10.91 m and the mean endpoint-to-known-node distance is 4.39 m. The fixed 30 m load-to-pole assignment rule retains 416 loads (96.97%) throughout the tolerance sweep, while the number of connected components decreases from 245 to 82 and the number of virtual nodes from 817 to 439 as the endpoint tolerance increases from 0.5 to 5.0 m. The confidence score classifies 32.40% of loads as High, 59.44% as Medium, 5.13% as Low, and 3.03% as Review/Unassigned. Under the stated residential screening assumptions, four transformers exceed the adopted 80% loading threshold. Synthetic perturbations leave the load-to-pole control metrics unchanged by construction, because only line-segment geometry is perturbed, but the number of connected components varies from 78 to 236, with a maximum relative change of 187.80% with respect to the 5 m base graph. The contribution is therefore a transparent GIS quality-screening procedure, not an exact reconstruction or electrical validation of the physical LV topology.