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Digital twin technology is changing how utilities oversee their vast networks of assets – from power lines and pipelines to pumps and transformers – by giving them a living digital replica of the field. For decades, utility asset management meant reactive fixes and siloed views: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition screens blinking with alarms, Geographic Information System maps showing static equipment locations, and engineers thumbing through maintenance logs. These tools worked in their time, but they only provided snapshots. When a problem arose, crews often scrambled across disparate systems to piece together what was wrong. The result? Delayed responses, unexpected failures, and a perpetual game of “firefighting” in operations. The question facing utilities today is no longer whether a given asset has failed, but when it will fail – and what can be done beforehand to prevent it.
In this article, you’ll explore how digital twins are being implemented to make asset management smarter and more proactive.
A New Asset View
For years, utilities managed assets through separate, specialized systems. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems monitored real-time sensor data, mapped equipment locations, and maintenance databases tracked work orders. But these disconnected silos rarely talked to each other. An engineer investigating, say, a pipeline leak might have to query the Geographic Information System for pipe specs, check Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition for pressure readings – wasting valuable time and risking errors. Without a unified view, decision-making was slow and often reactive. Staff essentially had no single source of truth.
Digital twins changed the game by breaking down these silos. A digital twin is “a dynamic, virtual replica of a physical asset, system, or process” that mirrors its real-world counterpart’s behavior in real time. In practice, this means pulling together feeds, Geographic Information System data, IoT sensor readings, maintenance logs, and more into one living model. The twin continuously updates with live data, providing an end-to-end view of the entire system. Instead of static drawings or one-off reports, operators get a dynamic digital representation of their grid or network that reflects current conditions. The result is that formerly invisible connections and patterns become visible. Blind spots disappear. The digital twin becomes a single pane of glass for asset information, where anyone – from control room engineers to field crews – can see what’s happening right now and even preview what’s likely to happen next.
Crucially, a digital twin is not just a 3D model or a schematic. It’s a living simulation.
Empowering the Utility Workforce
Digital twin adoption isn’t just a technology upgrade; it’s also a human change. A smarter asset management approach must uplift the people running the utility – from field technicians to control room operators to planners – and help capture the expertise of an aging workforce. Many utilities face a wave of retirements among seasoned engineers and technicians. These veterans carry decades of tacit knowledge about how systems behave and what to do in a pinch. When they leave, there’s a risk of a knowledge gap. One driver behind digital twins in the power & utilities sector is exactly this challenge: as experienced personnel retire, digital twins help bridge the knowledge gap by preserving and disseminating their insights to newer employees. The twin effectively becomes an institutional memory, embedding best practices and historical data that younger staff can access. Rather than starting from scratch, new operators can consult the digital model (and its data history) to understand how a substation or pressure zone has reacted to past issues, benefiting from the recorded wisdom of their predecessors.
At the same time, the next generation of utility workers is far more tech-savvy and expects modern tools. They’ve grown up in a digital world and are quick to adopt software that makes their jobs easier. Digital twins align perfectly with this, offering an interactive, visual, and data-rich environment to work in. In fact, younger professionals are seeking intuitive, technology-driven tools that streamline processes, and companies that fail to provide them risk losing talent to more innovative peers. By implementing digital twins, utilities not only improve operations but also make themselves a more attractive and engaging place to work for emerging talent. Field crews can use tablets or augmented reality headsets linked to the twin to get live information about an asset when they arrive on-site (like the history of a transformer that’s being serviced), reducing frustration and error. Control room staff have a single dashboard rather than half a dozen applications, which reduces cognitive load and stress. In short, the twin can turn a traditionally cumbersome workflow into a more user-friendly, efficient experience for employees.
In the water sector, case studies show significant boosts in staff productivity after digital twin integration. One European water utility (Porto, Portugal) implemented a unified digital twin platform and saw a 25% increase in operational efficiency – staff were able to accomplish one-quarter more work with the same resources. The same twin helped cut water supply failures by 30%, indicating that crews were addressing issues proactively instead of reacting to emergencies. This kind of efficiency gain speaks to empowered employees: the twin gives them better information and predictive insight, so they spend less time fighting fires and more time optimizing the system.
In effect, the twin becomes a collaboration platform as much as an engineering tool, aligning the workforce around data-driven decisions.
The New Playbook for Smarter Asset Management
Digital twins are pushing utilities to rewrite the asset management playbook, moving from reactive maintenance and siloed data to a proactive, integrated, and data-driven approach. Implementing this new playbook doesn’t happen overnight, but there are concrete steps and best practices that are emerging from the industry’s early adopters. Utility decision-makers and operations leaders can consider the following actionable takeaways as they shape their digital twin strategies:
Unify Your Data Streams: Break down data silos by integrating Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, Geographic Information System, meter data, and asset databases into a single platform (often cloud-based) that will feed your digital twin. A unified data foundation is the precursor to any effective twin – one source of truth for asset information.
Start with High-Value Pilots: Identify a specific domain or problem where a digital twin can quickly demonstrate value – for example, a particularly outage-prone part of the grid, a critical water treatment plant, or a set of gas pipeline valves. Implement a twin on a small scale there first. By focusing on a well-scoped pilot, you can more easily measure results.
Build Cross-Functional Teams: Don’t treat a digital twin as an IT project or an engineering project alone – it’s both. Create a blended team that includes operations experts, IT/data specialists, and analytics/modeling talent. This team should work collaboratively from day one to ensure the twin actually meets the needs of field users and can be integrated with existing systems.
Leverage IoT and Edge Technology: Ensure you have the sensor infrastructure to supply rich, real-time data to your twin. This might mean deploying additional IoT sensors on critical assets (for temperature, vibration, pressure, etc.) or upgrading to smart meters and devices.
Invest in Training and Change Management: A digital twin is only as effective as the people who use it. Provide hands-on training for operators and field crews on the new tools – show them how the twin can make their jobs easier.
Measure and Communicate Success: Define key performance indicators for your digital twin initiative, such as a reduction in equipment failures, maintenance costs, response times, or other reliability metrics, and track them.
Above all, think long-term and iterative. The most successful utility digital twin projects treat it as an evolving capability, not a one-off install. Start with the most critical assets or processes and progressively expand the twin’s scope as you learn and as data quality improves. Keep updating the models as conditions change. In time, what begins as a focused asset twin can grow into an integrated enterprise twin that links generation, grid, and customer data for a truly holistic view.
Operational Intelligence for the Future
The rise of digital twins signals a new era of operational intelligence in the utility industry. Asset management is becoming less about putting out fires and more about anticipating and preventing them. By bridging physical infrastructure with digital insight, utilities are transforming how they plan, operate, and sustain critical services.
None of this is to say the journey is easy. It requires investment, new skills, and often a cultural shift toward data-driven decision-making. Utilities must be honest about challenges like data silos, legacy integration, and the need for organizational buy-in. But as you’ve seen, these challenges can be met. The technology has matured to the point where cloud platforms and IoT connectivity can handle the scale of utility operations. Early adopters have shown that starting small and scaling works, and that the returns are real and significant.
Asset management is getting smarter, and that’s good news not just for utility companies, but for all who rely on electricity, gas, and water every day. When a utility can foresee issues and address them before customers ever notice, that’s the definition of operational excellence. Digital twins are helping utilities get there. The technology is here; the early lessons have been learned. The path forward is to apply those lessons pragmatically, keep people at the center of the transformation, and continuously adapt. Do that, and digital twins will not flatten a utility’s unique expertise – they will amplify it, turning data into actionable wisdom and reactive utilities into resilient, intelligent enterprises ready for the future.
