Smart Electrical Grids

Investing in smart electrical grids is a highly effective way for cities and utilities to manage the growing demand for electricity. The nation’s aging power grid is frequently pushed to capacity, making it difficult to reliably deliver cost-affordable energy to a growing population with increasing needs for power. Smart grid solutions enable utilities to overcome many of the limitations of the existing grid, delivering energy more effectively and cost-efficiently while avoiding the need to build costly new power infrastructure.

Smart electrical grids use data and intelligence gleaned from sensors throughout the network to gain clearer visibility into the health and performance of the grid. A smart grid also allows utility managers to balance supply with demand more effectively, and to identify and resolve trouble spots more quickly.

Providing grid managers with far more control and insight, smart electrical grids enable cities and utilities to:

• Reduce the cost of distributing electricity by minimizing operational costs and by more effectively balancing the load on the grid.
• Improve the reliability of the aging infrastructure by limiting stress on the system.
• Add additional supply – smart electrical grids can more easily incorporate electricity generated by alternative sources like wind, solar and customer-owned power sources.
• Heighten security and protection against cyberattacks. Continuous power monitoring in smart electricity grids enables grid managers to identify and stop threats to the grid more successfully.
• Recover more quickly after outages and disturbances -- smart electricity grids enable managers to pinpoint problems immediately and to route energy around trouble spots.

How smart electrical grids work

Like most smart city technologies, smart electrical grids involve several layers of essential technology.

• A network of sensors throughout the grid collects data on the health, performance and capacity of powerlines, transformers and substations, as well as data about the amount of energy consumed by customers.
• A high-performance network connects sensors and transmits the data they produce back to the city or utility.
• An analytics software platform collects sensor data, analyzes it and transforms it to produce actionable insight and intelligence.
• A variety of user interfaces – dashboards, reports and real-time maps of smart electrical grids – enable grid managers to digest and interact with the information produced by the smart grid technology.

Connecting smart electrical grids with Spectrum Enterprise

To provide municipalities with the infrastructure they need to connect smart electrical grids, Spectrum Enterprise has established a nationwide fiber network that stretches more than 840,000 miles. Spectrum is currently a trusted partner to many smart cities and is investing an additional $25 billion to expand capacity and capabilities to new communities, ensuring that cities everywhere will have the connectivity they require to power their smart grid system.

To support the needs of a smart power grid, Spectrum Enterprise also offers:

• Symmetrical connection speeds up to 100 Gbps on a two-away, fully interactive digital network for local governments and large enterprises.
• Gigabit connections for homes and businesses, enabling smart electrical grids to easily communicate with the thermostats and sensors within these facilities.
• Cellular connectivity provided by one of the largest LTE networks in the nation, providing the sensors in smart electrical grids with the diversity of connection they require.
• Thousands of WiFi hotspots throughout the country that will soon add 5G and 802.11ax technology capable of wireless speeds up to 1 Gbps.

Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.