What is a “smart” electric grid and why do utilities need one?
Electric distribution networks have changed very little in the past 100 plus years. Utilities continue to dispatch armies of meter readers to tabulate monthly energy consumption from backyards across America. When power goes out, the only way most utilities are aware of this fact is when customers call, and even then cannot pinpoint where the outage or outages have occurred. Utilities can only verify that power has been restored by having utility crews physically survey the outage areas on an ongoing basis to determine whether the lights have come back on. The Smart Grid changes that. Specifically, it refers to the application of smart computing (information technology) and digital communications capabilities overlaid on the electric distribution network, enabling utilities to have visibility into their end-to-end networks. The technology turns every point in the existing electric distribution network into a potential information source, able to instantly feed performance data back to
