North America's electric system is facing serious challenges. Major questions exist about its ability to continue providing citizens and businesses with relatively clean, reliable, and affordable energy services. The recent downturn in the economy masks areas of grid congestion in numerous locations across America. The "information economy" requires a reliable, secure, and affordable electric system to grow and prosper. Unless substantial amounts of capital are invested over the next several decades in new generation, transmission, and distribution facilities, service quality will degrade and costs will go up. These investments will involve new technologies that improve the existing electric system, and advanced technologies that could revolutionize the electric grid.

The vision of the smart grid is to break down barriers between transmission and distribution, communications, and back office systems to create a fully integrated network that provides diagnosis and resolution of problems as they arise and enables real time exchange of information between the utility and its customers.

The power transmission and distribution system is being transformed into a smart grid that integrates a multitude of distributed energy resources, uses solid state electronics to manage and deliver power, and employs automated control systems. The power industry, trailing behind other economic sectors already revolutionized by computerization, will see inexpensive computing power and low cost bandwidth infuse every element of the grid with digital intelligence in coming decades.

Advanced metering plays a major role in any smart grid infrastructure, and wireless applications are at the heart of advanced metering communications systems. The wireless comm. networks that will support advanced metering systems in the future will provide faster & more accurate use, load, and disruption information, which will help utility companies plan & manage their resources more effectively.