Highlighting Interoperability

Deck: 

A decision-maker’s checklist provide a starting point—but not an end-point.

Fortnightly Magazine - June 2007
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Recent predictions suggest that the U.S. electric industry will invest $300 billion in new transmission and distribution (T&D) facilities (including advanced meters) over the next decade, and $400 billion in new power plants over the next 25 years to meet forecasted demand growth. If we start now, we can build interoperability principles and capabilities into those investments and hasten the improvements in reliability, costs, innovation and value that interoperability can deliver. If we do not, more resources will be wasted, more assets stranded, and reliability threatened by our failure to move ahead with grid modernization and interoperability.

What We Talk About When We Talk About the Grid

When people talk about the “modern” or “smart” grid, interoperability is a necessary foundation of that concept. Within the electricity system, interoperability means the seamless, end-to-end connectivity of hardware and software from the customers’ appliances all the way through the transmission and distribution (T&D) system to the power source, enhancing the coordination of energy flows with real-time flows of information and analysis.

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