Utility Solutions

The Utility’s Dilemma

The existing electrical power distribution system is analog and is under increasing pressure to catch up to the digital economy for which it serves. Dedicated sensors and communications infrastructures are necessary components needed to monitor and manage the distribution grid allowing for the improvement of system wide efficiency and security. For several decades utilities have used their distribution networks to carry low-speed data for simple monitoring and control functions. Ambient has built upon this model by combining multiple high-speed Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications technologies to facilitate the needed migration to the next generation digital distribution grid and to solve some of the problems electric utilities and their customers face.

Electric utilities are under increasing economic, regulatory and societal pressure. Much of the aged infrastructure of the electrical distribution grid in the United States is near the end of its useful life span and needs to be better managed and perhaps eventually replaced. Additionally, energy demand is increasing at double the rate of population growth, raising the pressure to build new generating capacity to serve peak demand. These factors are impinged by economic and regulatory factors, as well as by increasing environmental awareness to make new additions to traditional generating capacity increasingly unattractive.

Moving forward in the 21st century, utilities attach great importance to increasing operational efficiencies and modernizing the distribution grid as key components in addressing the issues raised above, but presently lack the needed supporting infrastructure. Recognizing the increasing environmental awareness, regulators and individual utilities want to create incentives for consumers to both conserve and shift usage away from periods of peak demand but require new tools to do so. Determining the source of equipment failures and inefficiencies presently involve waiting for customers to call in and report outages. Meter reading and service changes are done by costly truck rolls to individual locations. Utilities pay much more for power at peak times but cannot communicate this variable pricing to most consumers to affect use patterns.

The Ambient Smart Grid™ communications platform enables the needed utility solutions that increase operational efficiency and improve security, by enabling the ability to monitor and control equipment, remotely read meters, and enable customers to make real-time price based usage decisions; and providing economic benefits for the grid operator, its users, and society as a whole.