The United States is in the process of upgrading its electrical power infrastructure. The patchwork nature of the current electric grid, which consists of more than 9,200 electric generating units with more than one million megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines (U.S. Department of Energy, 2013, What Is the Smart Grid?), has been stretched to its capacity.
Steps to transform the nation’s power grid into a smart grid – an advanced, digital infrastructure with two-way capabilities for communicating information, controlling equipment, and distributing energy – are being implemented from the bottom up and will take place over many years (NIST, 2010a). Intelligent, bi-directional communication devices are being incorporated in the industrial control systems (ICS) used by the electric industry.