http://www.gissmartgrid.com is a leader in GIS technology solutions for line loss issues.

1. Line-Loss
Line-Loss is a constant battle for electric utility companies regardless of their size. What
once was an acceptable level for line-losses can no longer be acceptable. According to
the Department of Energy1, it is estimated that United States utilities lost 6.6% in 1997
and of 6.5% in 2007. In some cases the percentage of line-loss reaches 10% - 15%. This
can result in multi-million dollar losses.
In a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, National Rural
Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) Chief Executive Officer Glen English had this to
say about distribution system line losses:
Resistance to the flow of electrical current in the distribution and transmission
system causes a portion of energy, typically 7 percent, to be lost in the form of
heat, resulting in higher emissions for the same amount of
delivered electricity. Data from the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) show
that cooperative distribution system line losses were consistently around 6%
from 1994 to 2000, well below the industry norm. In fact, RUS
reported cooperative line losses at 4.96% during 2001. While electric
cooperatives serve 12% of all electric consumers, they maintain nearly half
(2.3 million miles) of the nation’s distribution miles of line. With their
consumers widely dispersed (6.6 consumers per mile compared to 34 for
investor-owned utilities and 44 for municipals), cooperatives have maintained
a high degree of distribution efficiency under very challenging conditions. 2
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (eia) has created a table of the “State
Electricity Profiles”. The total for the United States is as follows:
Average Retail Net Summer Total Retail
Net Generation
Name Price Capacity Sales
(cents/kWh) (megawatts) (megawatthours) (megawatthours)
U.S.
9.82 1,025,400 3,950,330,926 3,596,864,866
Total
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration website, Date of Data: 2009, Published: April 2011.
Causes
There are numerous issues4 that cause line-loss for utilities including:
• Inaccuracy of wholesale metering CT’s & PT’s
• No-load losses within the electric system
• Inaccuracy of revenue Meters (calibrations, multipliers, defective, age, sizing,
etc.)

2. • Energy Thefts
• Un-Metered Errors, especially street and security lights
• Billing System account set-up errors
• Poor power factor
• Phase imbalance
• Improper primary/secondary conductor size.
Federal Involvement
The federal government began the process of mandating Smart Grid technology with
the Bush Administration. The Obama Administration has not missed a beat in their push
for Smart Grid technology. On June 13, 2011 the Obama Administration released this
press release “Administration Announces Grid Modernization Initiatives to Foster a
Clean Energy Economy and Spur Innovation”5. There are 4 primary goals mentioned in
this press release:
1. Better alignment of economic incentives to boost development and deployment
of smart-grid technologies
2. A greater focus on standards and interoperability to enable greater innovation
3. Empowerment of consumers with enhanced information to save energy, ensure
privacy, and shrink bills
4. Improved grid security and resilience
In an effort to meet these goals the Obama Administration released these public and
private-sector initiatives:
• $250 million in loans for smart-grid technology deployment as part of the US
Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service, which is focused on upgrading
the electric grid in rural America.
• The launch of Grid 21, a private sector initiative to promote consumer-friendly
innovations while ensuring proper privacy safeguards and consumer protections.
Grid 21 will help consumers get better access to their own energy usage
information so that they can take advantage of new tools and services to
manage their energy use and save on their utility bills.
• New commitments by the Department of Energy to focus on improving
consumer access to their own energy information, including the development of
a crowd-sourced map to track progress, a data-driven competition designed to
harness the imagination and enthusiasm of America’s students to encourage
home energy efficiency, and new EIA efforts to measure progress.
o Consumers deserve access to their own energy usage information in
consumer-friendly and computer-friendly formats. The Administration is

3. committed to working with States and stakeholders to ensure all
Americans can take advantage of new tools and services to manage their
energy use and save on their utility bills. With proper privacy safeguards
and consumer protections, a smarter electricity system can benefit all
consumers.
• Expanded partnerships to continue working with States and stakeholders,
including an initiative to share lessons learned from Recovery Act smart grid
investments, a series of regional peer-to-peer stakeholder meetings, and
updated online resources available at: www.SmartGrid.gov
• The formation of a Renewable Energy Rapid Response Team, co-led by the White
House Council on Environmental Quality, the Department of the Interior, and the
Department of Energy, to improve Federal coordination and ensure timely
review of proposed renewable energy projects and transmission lines, to ensure
that renewable energy can power cities and towns across America, and to
increase reliability and save consumers money by modernizing the grid.
These initiatives are the focus of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 20096
allocation to Smart Grid issues. The Green Energy initiatives involving Wind and Solar
power will play a role in replacing the fossil fuel generation of the past as we move
forward in upgrading our transmission grid in the United States.
Upgrading the transmission grid is a necessary element that should have been started a
long time ago. If the transmission is not upgraded then maximum results cannot be
achieved by the smart grid. Possible solutions7 for transmission are High-Voltage Direct
Current (HVDC), Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices, Gas-Insulated
Substations, Superconductors, Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS), etc.
ABB7 wrote a white paper on these solutions listed above. HVDC has 25% lower line-
losses compared to the traditional AC transmission lines while having up to 5 times the
capacity of AC lines. The superconductors called HTS (high temperature
superconducting) carry a line loss of .5% compared to the 5-8% of the traditional
conductors.
Distribution Solutions
ABB also listed other paths to improved efficiency. Here are those proposed paths:
• Distributed generation/Microgrids
• Underground distribution lines
• Intelligent grid design (smart grids via automation)
• Reduction of overall T&D transformer MVA
• Energy storage devices
• Three phase design for distribution

4. • Ground wire loss reduction techniques
• Higher transmission operating voltages
• Voltage optimization through reactive power compensation
• Asset replacement schedule optimization
• Distribution loss reduction via distribution automation
• Power factor improvement
• Load management (e.g., smart metering or price-sensitive load control)
• Power electronic transformers
AMR/AMI systems have been the first to attack the line-loss issue facing the electric
utilities. Those utilities who deployed AMR/AMI systems like Aclara’s TWACS metering,
have seen an increase in revenues due to more accurate meter billing. Solving these
issues first will result in the highest Return on Investment.
As the Smart Grid matures, more devices will be brought into the fold for monitoring.
Transformers are next on the list and are beginning to be tested. They should be ready
in the next 5 years for manufacturing and deployment to utilities. Soon to follow are
other protective devices with monitoring systems for the distribution conductors.
Data Generated by the Smart Grid
Now we have the question, how is the data gathered and organized. Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) becomes an essential tool for the organization and analysis of
data. Without a GIS in place the analysis of data, creation of reports, and gathering of
data becomes difficult. It is important that the data from the different sources is
interoperable with each other. The best way to ensure this interoperability is to require
that vendors providing the Smart Grid components be MultiSpeak
(www.multispeak.org) compliant. If you have not heard of the MultiSpeak standard here
is a description from MultiSpeak’s “About” page8:
The MultiSpeak Specification is a key industry-wide standard for realizing
the potential of enterprise application interoperability. The MultiSpeak
Specification is the most widely applied de facto standard in North
America pertaining to distribution utilities and all portions of vertically-
integrated utilities except generation and power marketing. It is currently
in use in daily operations of more than 600 electric cooperatives, investor-
owned utilities, municipals, and public power districts in at least 15
different countries.
The MultiSpeak Initiative is a collaboration of the National Rural Electric
Cooperative Association (NRECA), leading software vendors supplying the
utility market, and utilities. The Initiative has developed and continues to
expand the MultiSpeak Specification for Interoperability a specification

5. that defines standardized interfaces among enterprise software
applications commonly used by electric utilities.
GIS is the foundation of the organization of data. From this foundation the utility can
efficiently perform engineering analysis, outage management (which we will discuss in
the next chapter), improve customer service, provide pay via phone or online using
credit/debit cards, integrate automated vehicle location (AVL), laptops with distribution
system, etc. All of these activities create more efficiency in the utility. Utilities are
constantly being bombarded with accusations of rising utility rates from their
customers. With the reduction of line-loss those rates could come down. In order to
reduce line-loss efficiently the data must be organized, presented and analyzed in such a
way that issues on the distribution system are solved in a systematic approach. GIS
allows this systematic approach to be developed and shows trends and patterns
graphically. If there is no GIS then some patterns/trends could or would be missed.
As we move forward with the Smart Grid, the installation and use of GIS is becoming an
essential tool that utilities cannot live without. The utilities that see this vision before
investing in Smart Grid upgrades that are not interoperable, will have saved not only
money but aggravation as well.