Unlocking the Power of Grid Modernization

Fortnightly Magazine - December 2024

By Elizabeth Cook

Using Data and Technology

The modernization of the electric grid is a monumental challenge that requires a fundamental shift in how utilities operate, plan, and innovate. The goal is to create a fully integrated grid that optimizes the flow of electricity, ensures reliability, and enables real-time decision making.

This shift is supported by a dynamic layering of technologies, investments in data infrastructure, and a robust roadmap to achieve full situational awareness across all grid assets. By bridging silos that traditionally separate generation, transmission, distribution, and customer engagement, utilities can unlock insights that were previously unavailable.

These insights have the potential to drive impactful decision making that can prioritize capital investments and operational spending in real time. Many of AEIC’s member utilities are well along this path that will result in much for effective operations.

To truly understand the electric grid’s performance, utilities will integrate their operation’s teams (customer connections, planning, engineering, reliability, asset management, new technologies, operations center, field operations, technology support systems).