In today's troubled climate, the utilities sector is in the midst of unprecedented transformation. Several factors are driving fundamental change: liberalization and increased competition, strategic mergers and acquisitions, regulatory pressure around climate change, systems reliability, convergence, electricity and renewable concerns.
The challenge facing today's rural network operators is how to improve network reliability and reduce operating costs on great lengths of line that generate little income. The further challenge is how utilities will transform these same traditional assets into an intelligent, integrated, self-healing network, suitable for tomorrow. This paper shows how innovative new technologies can be deployed to improve overhead network performance, reduce operating cost and enable smart grid capability in the near future.
As the Electric Distribution industry enters the Smart Grid era, it is deploying a variety of new technologies (including distributed energy resources) and communications infrastructure to enhance the performance of the distribution grid, improve customer satisfaction and reduce the carbon foot- print.
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