Smart Grid Solutions

Access to affordable electricity is critical to the vitality and quality of life in any community. As our nation’s aging electrical grid is continually pushed to the limits of its abilities, many cities are turning to smart grid solutions to improve reliability, lower costs, reduce the burden on existing infrastructure and manage the increasing complexity and growing needs of electricity in the 21st century.

Like other Smart city initiatives, smart grid solutions rely on real-time data to provide actionable intelligence that utility administrators and city officials can use to manage changing demand for electricity more efficiently. Smart grid solutions incorporate Internet of Things (IoT) sensors throughout the grid – on everything from power lines and thermostats to transformers and substations, and even on utility poles to monitor the weather – to gather data on system health, performance and demand, as well as problems that may affect delivery of power to homes and businesses. All the data from smart grid IoT sensors is communicated via a high-performance network to an analytics platform, where it is sliced and diced to provide actionable intelligence for utility officials.

Smart grid solutions can also include power monitoring technology and two-way communication between customers and utilities, enabling consumers to have more control over their power consumption. A smart grid system may enable customers to use less electricity at times when is most expensive, delaying certain tasks (like running the dishwasher or doing the laundry) until the times of day when energy prices are lower.

Advantages of smart grid solutions

By employing smart grid solutions, cities may be able to:

• Reduce the cost of energy by lowering management and utility costs, and by avoiding the need to invest in costly new power plants to keep up with demand for electricity.
• Provide more efficient transmission of electricity to conserve energy and reduce carbon footprint.
• Recover more quickly from incidents and outages, using the self-healing capabilities of smart electrical grids.
• Anticipate and respond to spikes in demand by better balancing the load across the entire grid.
• Protect the smart energy grid from cyberattack and natural disasters with improved physical and cyber security.
• Enable the inclusion of additional power sources such as wind and solar, as well as customer-owned power generation sources.

Delivering connectivity for smart grid solutions

A high-performance network is critical to the success of smart grid solutions and other smart city initiatives like water quality monitoring, smart street lights and smart parking systems. To enable utilities to connect smart sensors throughout the grid with the analytics software and technology required to produce real-time intelligence, Spectrum Enterprise provides a foundation of connectivity that includes more than 840,000 miles of fiber connections throughout the country.

As a trusted partner to smart cities nationwide, Spectrum also offers:

• 100 Gbps symmetrical connection speeds for local governments, enterprises and other large institutions.
• WiFi connectivity at more than 350,000 hotspots throughout the nation that will soon deliver connection speeds up to 1 Gbps, thanks to the introduction of 5G and 802.11ax technology.
• Cellular connectivity through one of the country’s largest LTE cellular networks.
• Fiber connections for homes and businesses with speeds up to 1 Gbps, enabling utilities to easily communicate with smart grid technology within residential and commercial settings.

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