With Florida Project, the Smart Grid Has Finally Arrived

Many utilities are installing smart meters—Pacific Gas & Electric in California has installed twice as many as FPL, for example. But while these are important, the flexibility and resilience that the smart grid promises depends on networking those together with thousands of sensors at key points in the grid— substations, transformers, local distribution lines, and high voltage transmission lines. (A project in Houston is similar in scope, but involves half as many customers, and covers somewhat less of the grid.)

In FPL’s system, devices at all of these places are networked—data jumps from device to device until it reaches a router that sends it back to the utility—and that makes it possible to sense problems before they cause an outage, and to limit the extent and duration of outages that still occur ..... The project involved 4.5 million smart meters and over 10,000 other devices on the grid.

With Florida Project, the Smart Grid Has Finally Arrived