Control Room of the Future

For Transmission System Operators (TSOs) and Distribution System Operators (DSOs), managing and balancing today’s dynamic grid is a complex challenge. Demand is growing and shifting through electrification. Supply is becoming more decentralized and intermittent as more Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) come online. And outages and extreme weather events are increasing.

To provide more capacity without significantly expanding infrastructure, TSOs and DSOs must transform their control rooms from reactive monitoring centers into proactive, automated and AI-assisted hubs. In other words, they must start making the concept of the Control Room of the Future real.

Advanced technologies hold great promise, but barriers stand in the way

In practice, that means adopting an intelligent, automated control system. One that integrates, interprets and acts upon vast amounts of data to optimize an increasingly distributed, decarbonized and digital grid.

But while control centers have invested in data and AI-driven technologies to monitor assets, manage power flows and maintain stability, they lack the processing power to realize the full benefits. Data from smart meters and sensors at the grid’s edge arrive too late to be useful. And because IT, OT and external data are siloed, utilities lack the unified view needed to shift from reactive to proactive grid management.

The result is that most control centers still operate manually. With experienced operators retiring, it’s more important than ever that utilities harness advanced technologies to close that talent gap and manage an increasingly diverse and complex grid.

Introducing GridOS: the backbone of advanced grid operations

By moving processing, IT and OT capabilities to the cloud, we give TSOs and DSOs a unified, accurate and real-time view of their data, along with the power to make full use of it. So they can realize the economic, environmental and efficiency promise of advanced technologies and serve their customers better with a smaller control center workforce.