GIS and Smart Grid

“GIS + Smart Grid = Enabling location intelligence to utility network systems”

The highlight of the GIS technology in a smart grid concept is its capability in visually representing the geographic location of each and every events happening in a utility network detected by OT integration systems like SCADA, OMS, DMS and various other related smart metering systems. The one among many challenges faced by the utility network systems is the outage management. Giving an immediate response to restore an outage issue is one of the hurdles to pass by which is currently tedious because of the obscure information made available about the geographic location while an event is reported. But once GIS is integrated with the OT systems, these systems automatically sends corresponding signals pertaining to outage or power load in that very exact moment to the applications/systems built upon geographic data and enables the analysis and manipulation of location or event which therefore lowers the response time to resolve the issue. Hence, considering this ideology if we take a look at the smart grid concept implementation in an electric utility network, it is so obvious that without GIS, this concept is incomplete.

GIS is about leveraging the observation capability of the monitoring systems and pin pointing the exact location of the events happening in the nooks and corner of the utility network and hence we can say that integration of GIS will lead to enabling location intelligence to the smart grid concept.