A company can save 50 cents on a common transaction. By itself, that may not seem like a big deal. Suppose it could be repeated a few times a year. Then suppose it could be repeated hundreds of thousands of times, perhaps millions of times, over the course of a year. That could get some manager's attention in a hurry.

The software purchasing community requires interoperable products in their networks, value and supply chains that install easily to begin intercommunicating with other like products in a straight forward manner. This frequently is not the case even with products that call themselves interoperable, and this may costs the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional IT expense.

Today's advances in analytic methods, data availability, and technology allow use of data in ways that could only be dreamed about years ago. Data-driven decision making has become essential to companies wishing to optimize business practices or cater their solutions to a more targeted audience.

A national Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) once again failed in the U.S. Congress late last year when it was removed from a comprehensive energy bill that passed at the end of the session. The House of Representatives had passed its version of the energy bill that included a requirement for most U.S. utilities to acquire 15% of their energy from sources like wind and solar energy.

All of the major MDMS vendors can calculate billing determinants and do validation, estimation and editing (VEE). Yet, as utilities are expanding AMI business cases beyond just reading meters and TOU rates, they expect more functionality out of the MDMS they will select.

One of the drivers that has enabled the U.S. economy to grow is the quality of our power generation and delivery system. Today, our electricity grid is powered primarily by large, centralized generation facilities with only a small amount provided by distributed energy resources.

Part I of this article discussed the types of energy created from various sources, and examined wind and bioliquids. Part II of this article will continue with a discussion of energy from biomass, solar, and ocean and river currents.

Typically, utilities use a mix of communications technologies to send real-time information about the status of equipment such as transformers in substations and other devices throughout a transmission and distribution system back to a central command center.