Grid Automation: More Than Smart Meters (AMI or AMR)

Many energy utilities have made a move to develop a power system that combines traditional and cutting-edge technologies to support the ever-increasing array of digital services desired by customers while effectively managing the requisite flow of energy. A number of fully integrated smart grid communities (e.g. Boulder, CO) are being developed, anticipating that tangible benefits will be realized by all stakeholders, including:

• Carbon footprint reduction (lowered residential peak demand, energy consumption, and improved distribution losses).
• Digitally enhanced, more resilient and stable energy grid, less prone to outages (smart grid reliability improves the ability to predict and/or prevent outages).
• Improved ability to identify and locate source of outages (improved restoration).
• Deferral of capital expenditures (improved load estimates and reduction in peak load from enhanced demand management).
• Reduction in operating expenses from the use of remote and automated disconnects/reconnects.
• Integration of renewable generation.

The utilities supporting these communities acknowledge that:

• The general design and configuration of the current electricity grid hasn’t changed materially in the past 50 years and it cannot keep up with growing demands and changing technologies (i.e. a smart grid system is needed).
• Customers’ needs are growing faster than the current grid can handle. If the industry does not expand its capacity to keep up with a projected increase in demand, electric grids will become increasingly less reliable.

Consistent with these themes our view runs counter to the notion that smart grid involves merely the installation of smart meters and vertical solutions; rather it represents an evolution to a full end-to-end digital grid solution.