ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter provides an overview of communication network centers that harness the telemetered information from primary and secondary distribution networks. The supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network archives incoming measurements from the pole-mounted devices in the primary distribution network. The customer-billing center harnesses consumer consumption data from customers’ smart meters. The massive deployment of smart meters in many cities would introduce demand response and applications to adjust the peak and non-peak usage with different prices over time. The net metering policies may encourage customers to use more or less energy at different times of the day. The infrastructure of metering distribution networks has become ubiquitous and has enhanced overall system observability, which can derive new applications in the control room to coordinate with the power outages of customers and with work crews as well as to effectively pinpoint the location of the electrical short circuit.
