Smart Power Grid

As cities and utilities work to build the infrastructure and solutions that will deliver power in the 21st century, many have chosen to adopt a smart power grid to deliver electricity more reliably and cost-efficiently.

A smart grid uses Internet of Things (IoT) sensors placed throughout the grid to collect real-time information about the health and performance of the system that delivers electricity to homes and businesses. A smart power grid also enables two-way communication between the utility and residential and business consumers, providing the utility with real-time information about energy consumption and giving consumers more control over the amount of energy they use at any given moment.

Through this combination of data collection and connectivity, a smart power grid can enable cities and utilities to:

• Manage the energy supply more efficiently, proactively monitoring and balancing the load on the grid.
• Improve the reliability of an aging power grid by better controlling demand.
• Restore electricity more quickly after power outages and disturbances.
• Integrate more alternative sources of energy such as wind and solar, as well as customer-owned power generation systems.
• Maintain the health of the smart power grid through self-healing capabilities that route energy around issues in the grid.
• Save money by lowering the cost of managing and distributing electricity, and by enabling existing infrastructure to continue meeting the demand for electricity rather than investing in costly new infrastructure.
• Protect the power grid from cyberattack with more effective monitoring.

A smart power grid can also provide home and business consumers with more choice and control over their energy use. Consumers can postpone activities that involve high energy consumption to times when energy prices are lower. They may also allow the smart grid system to automatically control their use of energy in exchange for lower pricing on electricity.

The technology behind the smart power grid

Smart power grid involves several key layers of technology:

• A collection of sensors is responsible for providing real-time information about the smart power grid. Smart grid IoT sensors monitor the temperature and capacity of power lines, potential faults or problems in substations, the level of energy consumption in homes and businesses, and changes in the weather that may affect power consumption.
• A high-bandwidth, high-performance network connects all the smart grid technology together and transmits the data that sensors produce to the utility for analysis.
• An analytics platform aggregates the raw data from smart grid sensors and transforms it into actionable intelligence.
• User interfaces such dashboards and analytics reports package the smart energy intelligence into formats that can be easily digested and interpreted by city officials and grid managers.

Spectrum Enterprise: connectivity for the smart power grid

Spectrum Enterprise is a trusted partner to many smart cities throughout the U.S., providing a foundation of connectivity that quickly and reliably delivers data from smart power grid sensors to the utility for analysis and action. Spectrum has built a national network infrastructure covering more than 840,000 miles of fiber cable and is currently investing billions of dollars to expand capacity and capabilities into more communities.

With Spectrum Enterprise, utilities can more easily manage their smart grid solutions and support other smart city initiatives, relying on Spectrum’s fiber connectivity to connect it all. Spectrum Enterprise provides:

• Symmetrical connection speeds up to 100 Gbps for governments and enterprise clients on a two-way, fully interactive digital network.
• Home and business connections that deliver 1 Gbps connectivity, enabling the smart power grid to easily communicate with sensors and thermostats in residential and commercial settings.
• Wireless connections at thousands of WiFi hotspots nationwide that will soon offer wireless speeds up to 1 Gbps, thanks to 5G and 802.11ax technologies.
• Cellular connectivity provided by the same LTE cellular networks that powers Spectrum Mobile, one of the largest networks in the nation.

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