Southern California Edison Unveils Nation’s Smartest Neighborhood Electricity Circuit

October 16, 2007 01:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Southern California Edison Unveils Nation’s Smartest Neighborhood Electricity Circuit

California’s Largest Electric Utility Now Home to Industry Leading Initiatives in All Three ‘Smart Grid’ Technology Areas — Transmission, Distribution and Customer Metering

ROSEMEAD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Southern California Edison (SCE) today announced it has designed and installed the nation’s most advanced neighborhood electricity circuit. The pioneering project, known as “Circuit of the Future,” recently began delivering power to 1,420 residential and business customers in Southern California’s Inland Empire, the nation’s fastest growing urban region.

“A high-tech world can no longer afford a low-tech electricity grid,” said John E. Bryson, chairman and chief executive officer of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison. “With smart grid technology, power outages will be fewer and shorter. Because advanced digital technology can react more quickly than human operators, potential problems can be identified, analyzed and isolated before they become significant power outages.”

Much like a household electrical circuit, utility distribution circuits are individual segments of larger power grids that are controlled with on-off switches and protected by circuit breakers. They carry power from neighborhood substations to homes and businesses. SCE’s 50,000-square-mile power delivery network is subdivided into 4,200 such circuits, each connecting and delivering power to approximately 1,500 residential and business customers.

The U.S. Department of Energy provided almost $1 million in research and development funds in support of the SCE smart circuit project.

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