Grid Futures

Deck: 

Evolutionary directions for electric system architecture.

Fortnightly Magazine - April 2011
This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.

Electric transmission and distribution (T&D) systems today are going through substantial evolution. That evolution might proceed along any of several possible paths, each of which would affect the way utility companies operate in the United States.

To better understand how T&D systems are evolving, scenario analysis provides a method of disciplined speculation to help organize and articulate our thinking. The object isn’t to evaluate the relative probability or merit of different future outcomes, but rather to consider how specific factors might influence and shape these outcomes in a way that’s consistent with what we know today. Starting with explicit premises about cause-effect relationships, the exercise follows the logical implications of changes in specific variables in order to construct a set of distinct futures that are each plausible under different sets of conditions (see Figure 1).

This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.