The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 spurred investments in smart grid technology and programs at utilities across the country. The Smart Grid Investment Grant program and Smart Grid Demonstration projects that it funded provided unprecedented opportunities to learn from smart grid implementation. In 2011, the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE), in partnership with electric utilities that received ARRA funds, convened a series of Regional Smart Grid Peer-to-Peer Workshops. These were designed to bring together utilities to engage in dialogues about the most compelling smart grid topics in each region. The meetings offered a platform for smart grid implementers at all stages of project deployment to share their experiences and learn from each other.
Realizing the benefits of bringing utilities together to share their experiences, in February 2014, OE formed the Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) Working Group by assembling a leadership team of representatives from the utility industry with the mission to collect the experiences, insights, and lessons learned from implementing these systems. This Voices of Experience | Insights into Advanced Distribution Management Systems report is the result of a one-day meeting held at CenterPoint Energy in Houston, Texas, in May 2014 that was followed by a series of conference calls about specific aspects of ADMS, interviews with individuals leading ADMS projects at their utilities, and a final small group meeting at San Diego Gas & Electric in California in October 2014. The information in the report came directly from the people in the industry on the leading edge of transforming their distribution systems...
