These drivers include:

• The escalating electric power intensity of the economy coming from an increased demand for electric power and an emergence of hybrid transportation options
• The larger focus on energy efficiency solutions at all levels – residential, commercial and industrial.
• Customers’ increased reliability demands from their electric utilities through fewer outages, faster restorations and better power quality.
• The increased pushback from the public to adding any new generation from fossil-fired sources due to both siting and pollution concerns.

All of these drivers are leading to a greater need for infrastructure renewal and innovative solutions necessary to supply these new and expanded requirements.

Battelle has a long history of leading the industry and the country as a whole, in terms of energy solutions:

• Battelle is a founding member of the GridWise Alliance (www.gridwise.org) which is a vehicle for expanding the sphere of stakeholders, and engaged leaders of industry government, and our community in terms of addressing our nation’s electricity infrastructure challenges. Battelle manages or co-manages six national laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy, several of which strategically focus on grid technology research and development.
• Battelle is involved in a broad range of grid stability research, including voltage stability, transient stability analysis and small signal stability.
• The Battelle-managed Pacific Northwest National Lab has invested in bringing together industry software, real-time grid data and advanced computation into a functional control room, known as an Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center (http://eioc.pnl.gov ). Through hands-on experience, Battelle has figured out how to improve and expand the grid as we expand energy generation. Our smart grid approach is capable of monitoring the new sources of energy, their transmission and distribution and able to regulate each when it senses disruptions in the grid.

We strongly believe the implementation of a smart grid, along with an overall system of demand management, will help provide the lower carbon future that has become a necessity in terms of both our current standards and future energy requirements.