Environmental Impact
Energy Independence
Green Jobs
Rising Costs
Power Reliability
Modern Infrastructure
Issues

Our increasingly overburdened electrical infrastructure is quickly aging and has undergone little investment in the past 25 years.1 Even worse, most generation stations were built in the 1960s or earlier using even older technology.2

In fact, if Thomas Edison were here today, he would be all-too familiar with our electrical infrastructure—since not that much has changed. Alexander Graham Bell, on the other hand, would need to take a college course to understand the technology advances in communications. Cell phones and PDAs have replaced the rotary phones of our past, and technology is so advanced, we can access the Internet, take photos, and send written messages from our tiny cellular devices.

In a world so technologically advanced, why are we still working with a power grid that lacks the intelligence necessary to manage the needs of our 21st Century society? Edison might be asking the same exact question.

 
 
  Opportunities

While investment in today’s electrical infrastructure has lagged behind our growing energy demands, there is good news—making it smarter will be easier than ever before as the cost of communication technology comes down, as switches and sensors become smarter, and as computing power and visualization software become more powerful. By increasing our grid’s "intelligence," we will be able to maximize the performance of our electrical infrastructure to manage, distribute and control electricity more efficiently.


  
 
  1) U.S. Department of Energy. "The Smart Grid: An Introduction." Page 12 (graph).
2) U.S. Department of Energy. "The Smart Grid: An Introduction." Page 22.