Utilities are facing a host of challenges ranging from environmental concerns, aging infrastructure and systems, to Smart Grid technology and related program decisions. The future utility will be required to find effective solutions to these challenges, while continuing to meet the increasing expectations of newly empowered consumers. This brings an opportunity to create stronger, more profitable relationships with customers, and to do so more cost effectively.

Several techniques can help utilities better understand how networks will operate in various smart grid scenarios to maximize real-time performance.

In the past, distribution demand reduction was a technique used only in emergency situations a few times a year - if that. It was an all-or-nothing capability that you turned on, and hoped for the best until the emergency was over. Few utilities could measure the effectiveness, let alone the potential of any solutions that were devised.

When engineers built the national electric grid, their achievement made every other innovation built on or run by electricity possible - from the car and airplane to the radio, television, computer and the Internet. Over decades, all of these inventions have gotten better, smarter and cheaper while the grid has remained exactly the same. As a result, our electrical grid is operating under tremendous stress. The Department of Energy estimates that by 2030, demand for power will outpace supply by 30 percent.

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:

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.

Utilities that want to transform raw data into actionable business insight must understand the importance of integration in implementing analytics.

If you define a machine as a series of interconnected parts serving a unified purpose, the electric power grid is arguably the world's largest machine. The next-generation version of the electric power grid - called the intelligent utility network (IUN), the smart grid or the intelligent grid, depending on your nationality or information source - provides utilities with enhanced transparency into grid operations.

Real-time price controls of distributed energy resources dramatically reduced stress on local distribution systems.

The Olympic Peninsula Project consisted of a field demonstration and test of advanced price signal-based control of distributed energy resources (DERs). Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and led by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the project was part of the Pacific Northwest Grid- Wise Testbed Demonstration.

Pepco Holdings has created a 'Blueprint for the Future' - leading the way for the nation to meet its energy sustainability challenges.

The United States and the world are facing two preeminent energy challenges: the rising cost of energy and the impact of increasing energy use on the environment. As a regulated public utility and one of the largest energy delivery companies in the Mid-Atlantic region, Pepco Holdings Inc. (PHI) recognized that it was uniquely positioned to play a leadership role in helping meet both of these challenges.