Utilities are facing a host of critical issues over the next 10 years. One of the major approaches to dealing with these challenges is for utilities to become much more "intelligent" through the development of Intelligent Utility Enterprises (IUE) and Smart Grids (SG). The IUE/SG will require ubiquitous communications systems throughout utility service territories, especially as automated metering infrastructure (AMI) becomes a reality.

Utilities stand to realize several benefits by adopting a new approach to meet customer needs and engage a partner that will facilitate the network upgrade and the service transition.

Change is being forced upon the utilities industry. Business drivers range from stakeholder pressure for greater efficiency to the changing technologies involved in operational energy networks. New technologies such as intelligent networks or smart grids, distribution automation or smart metering are being considered.

The communications network is becoming the key enabler for the evolution of reliable energy supply. However, few utilities today have a communications network that is robust enough to handle and support the exacting demands that energy delivery is now making.

Alcatel-Lucent offers comprehensive capabilities that combine Utility industry - specific knowledge and experience with carrier - grade communications technology and expertise. Our IP/MPLS Transformation capabilities and Utility market - specific knowledge are the foundation of turnkey solutions designed to enable Smart Grid and Smart Metering initiatives. In addition, Alcatel-Lucent has specifically developed Smart Grid and Smart Metering applications and solutions that:

Even as the smart grid comes together, utilities must consider factors such as data sources, models and security to ensure long-term success.

The smart grid is progressing well on several fronts. Groups such as the Grid Wise Alliance, events such as Grid Week, and national policy citations such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in the U.S., for example, have all brought more positive attention to this opportunity. The boom in distributed renewable energy and its demands for a bidirectional grid are driving the need forward, as are sentiments for improving consumer control and awareness, giving customers the ability to engage in real-time energy conservation.

Trilliant is the leader in delivering intelligent networks that power the smart grid. Trilliant provides hardware, software and service solutions that deliver on the promise of Advanced Metering and Smart Grid to utilities and their customers, including improved energy efficiency, grid reliability, lower operating cost, and integration of renewable energy resources.

Using dynamic pricing and digital technology to move from centralized control to decentralized coordination.

For the past century, the dominant business and regulatory paradigms in the electric power industry have been centralized economic and physical control. The ideas presented here and in my forthcoming book, Deregulation, Innovation, and Market Liberalization: Electricity Restructuring in a Constantly Evolving Environment (Routledge, 2008), comprise a different paradigm - decentralized economic and physical coordination - which will be achieved through contracts, transactions, price signals and integrated intertemporal wholesale and retail markets.

Alcatel-Lucent's vision is to enrich people's lives by transforming the way the world communicates. Alcatel-Lucent provides solutions that enable service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end users. As a leader in carrier and enterprise IP technologies; fixed, mobile and converged broadband access; applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent offers the end-to-end solutions that enable compelling communications services for people at work, at home and on the move.

Utilities can build more intelligent grids today by better leveraging their existing resources and investing in the intelligent grid backbone.

Many people in the utility industry see the intelligent grid — an electric transmission and distribution network that uses information technology to predict and adjust to network changes — as a long-term goal that utilities are still far from achieving. Energy Insights research, however, indicates that today's grid is more intelligent than people think. In fact, utilities can begin having the network of the future today by better leveraging their existing resources and focusing on the intelligent-grid backbone.

PowerSense delivers cutting-edge monitoring and control equipment together with integrated supervision to enable the modern electrical utility to prepare its existing power infrastructure for tomorrow's SmartGrid.

Utilities have neither the financial nor the human resources to do everything at once.

The next 10 to 15 years will see major changes - what future historians might even call upheavals - in the way electricity is distributed to businesses and households throughout the United States. The exact nature of these changes and their long-term effect on the security and economic well-being of this country are difficult to predict. However, a consensus already exists among those working within the industry - as well as with politicians and regulators, economists, environmentalists and (increasingly) the general public - that these fundamental changes are inevitable.