There's an App for Achieving a Smarter Grid Today

Consumers are complaining about the grave inconveniences they experienced and airing their grievances about how unreliable and unresponsive their utility companies are. They are completely unaware that the utilities industry would likely agree, as demonstrated in the effort underway to develop the smart grid. Consumers may have never heard of the term smart grid let alone understand that it will help utility companies soften the outage blow for consumers, getting the power, on which their daily lives rely, restored more quickly.

Meanwhile, utilities industry discussions have focused on how the smart grid could have lessened the impact of the storm, not only on consumers, but on utility companies as well. Once in place, the smart grid will allow utility companies to receive automatic power outage notifications and automate power rerouting, decreasing the length of power outages and reducing the cost and effort required to restore them.

According to a recent blog by Dr. Massoud Amin, director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota -- Twin Cities, power outages currently cost the U.S. economy between $80 and $188 billion per year. Dr. Amin also estimates that the smart grid will reduce the cost of outages by $49 billion per year. However, he cites timeline projections of between 10 and 20 years and cost projections between $150 billion to $1.5 trillion to realize the smart grid.

While we are several years and billions of dollars away from the smart grid, we can achieve a smarter grid today. By simply improving the communications technology we own now we can better optimize asset utilization and operational efficiency, enhance reliability and security and better manage power quality.

Innovative software applications running over broadband IP networks coupled with our existing technologies or sleek new portable devices are generating smarter, more cost-effective solutions to age-old problems in the utilities industry. This software can be deployed on a variety of smartphones, tablets and PCs as a quick and cost-effective means to achieve more advanced, fully interoperable communications, helping to realize the cost and efficiency improvements promised by the smart grid. Software offers solutions that are flexible, mobile, lightweight and can track the rich data that is the backbone of the utilities sector. Software can also integrate with video and voice applications, making jobs easier to perform and making performance more accurate and timely. In fact, it is this scalable, flexible communication foundation that will segue utilities to the smart grid in the future.

Software solutions connect and extend critical voice, video and data communications by removing device, system and platform barriers. Such solutions require no new hardware and, unlike proprietary systems, have no hardware preference. Software supports limitless clients, including tablets, smartphones, two-way radios, desktop IP phones and PCs.

Because software allows utility companies to leverage existing devices and infrastructures, including radio systems, they are able to reduce ongoing operating and maintenance costs. In addition, they may repurpose existing equipment and even connect previously incompatible equipment, such as traditional trunked radios, to their communications network, providing them with an easy solution to spectrum squeeze.

Software solutions also offer utility companies more cost-effective dispatch control and operations. For example, utilities can reduce the number of hardware consoles or replace them entirely via a client application installed on a PC. This would help the utility to move away from expensive proprietary networks and instead utilize 2G, 3G and 4G networks. A utility company could dispatch to thousands of people from a single PC, effectively consolidating multiple systems into one console and dramatically improving workflow and customer service.

Software allows a utility company's communications network to span multiple facilities spread over a wide geographic area because it easily manages any complex web of public and private networks, including the mobile workers out in the field. For example, using a simple web browser application a customer service manager using a PC and fielding calls from consumers who have lost power in a storm could talk directly to a radio-equipped field worker who is restoring power. The same customer service manager might then use his browser application to participate in push-to-talk communications with a group of fieldworkers who are using smartphones. Simply put, software brings together diverse communications technologies of any kind into a single, standardized, interoperable communications network.

Unifying disparate communications systems and devices now will not only improve operations, it will also prepare utility companies for more intelligent meter and consumption monitoring, better management of communications across decentralized architectures and a more transparent dialogue with customers, which is especially important as the utilities markets are liberalized with the smart grid. Software is the only solution that enhances voice and data transmission, improving real-time communications without causing grand-scale interruptions to current communications processes or major threats to existing infrastructures.

Information flowing in both directions so that consumers, suppliers and new automated technologies can provide and respond to data for better, more cost-effective decision making is what makes a grid smart. Utility companies can achieve this information flow today, reducing the resources they spend and improving the service they provide to consumers not only during major incidents like Hurricane Irene, but every day. Without software, a simple, cost-effective solution would not be available today. Embracing software as a means to grow communications networks, achieve immediate performance improvements and realize interoperability is smarter communications and the first step in the right direction toward a smart grid.