The concept of a smart electric grid refers to smart computing (information technology) and digital communications capabilities overlaid on the electric distribution network to enable utilities for the first time to have real-time visibility into their end-to-end electric distribution networks. The technology turns every point in the existing network – including every meter and transformer – into a potential information source, able to instantly feed performance data back to the utility. Simply put, it provides utilities with the intelligence required to implement real-time, self-monitoring networks.

CURRENT Smart Grid™ technology improves power flow efficiency and reliability, addressing electricity problems before they can grow into brownout and blackout situations that cost the U.S. billions of dollars in lost economic output. The technology also enables enhanced security of the distribution networks, including video surveillance and advanced monitoring capabilities to immediately detect disruptions of power services.

The three core elements of a Smart Grid (High Performance Communication, Advanced Sensing and Actionable Intelligence) combine to provide an unprecedented view into the utility network with the final result – the ability to detect problems with specificity in both location and time so a precise and definitive action can be taken. This action can often avoid problems before they result in failures of equipment or outages; thus moving the utility to a preventive maintenance model from a responsive model that follows failure or outage.

High Performance Communications
CURRENT’s network is an IP-based, open standard, two-way high speed network that operates with low latency to facilitate multiple real time applications. Managing the distribution grid in the 21st century - in a world increasingly focused on improving efficiency and reliability while reducing the environmental impact of electric consumption - necessitates monitoring electricity as it passes literally millions of discrete points (substation elements, high, medium and low voltage power lines, capacitor banks, transformers, meters, communicating thermostats, load control devices, etc.). Moreover, such a necessity significantly increases when one accounts for the potential of widespread residential and commercial solar panels, plug-in hybrid vehicles and other distributed energy sources.

A 21st-century Smart Grid network must have the bandwidth, embedded sensing and software to collect, organize, analyze and report this huge volume of information. It needs the two-way bandwidth necessary to link the real time events being measured (such as load and congestion, system stability and equipment health or outages) with the appropriate grid responses necessary to improve efficiency and reliability.

Advanced Sensing
Advanced sensors provide the situational awareness of the present state of the entire network, and are critical to better operation and efficient utilization of that network. CURRENT’s equipment features voltage and current sensors integrated into the equipment providing the most cost-effective overall solutions available on the market. These sensors are placed at every distribution transformer within the distribution system, and provide an unprecedented view of network health and operation. Additionally, the open nature of CURRENT’s communications solution allows additional sensors of any type to be placed at critical points within the infrastructure to further enhance visibility into the network.

Actionable Intelligence
Simply providing sensor data from millions of points can overwhelm any utility’s ability to process and make sense of the information. True situational awareness comes not from simply collecting sensor data, but by analyzing the data to extract meaningful information. This analysis must utilize data from across the utility, not just from any single silo within the utility. This enterprise analysis requires automated analysis to deal with the scale of the task and to stretch critical knowledge bases within the utility workforce. Additionally, the analysis must be located in many places at the point of sensing to allow distributed control and automation of present and future network activity such as recloser operation, distributed generation control, and demand response. This analysis platform must provide linkages to every other system within the utility, through APIs and with information flow that ensures that existing systems benefit from the enhanced view into the state of the network.

CURRENT’s system provides such enterprise analytics today in our Actionable Intelligence Smart Grid System. This system utilizes operational and non-operational data from transmission, substation, and distribution systems to provide an unprecedented view of utility operation. The end result is the provision of Actionable Intelligence – identification of specific and definable actions that respond to live problems, improve operating efficiency, help mitigate aging workforce issues, lower energy losses, and even avoid failures before they occur. Actionable Intelligence defines the time, place, and specific action that should occur, allowing dispatch of crews directly to specific problems without lengthy search and ensuring a speedy response directed at the problem. This approach can even identify problems before a customer may notice the issue.