By Geoff Zeiss, Director of Technology, Autodesk, Inc.
Experts predict that a build-out of the smart grid will be one of the largest creators of wealth in the decade. One smart grid analyst goes so far as to say that the smart grid is "akin to the transcontinental railroad, the phone system, the interstate highway system and the Internet."
Challenges
It is very easy to see why America needs to do something about the current power grid.  The reliability of the existing grid is decreasing as our dependence on it is increasing.  According to the Department of Energy, today's electricity system is 99.97 percent reliable, yet still allows for power outages and interruptions that cost Americans at least $150 billion each year - about $500 for every man, woman and child. Consider this:
- The number of outages affecting more than 50,000 people was 41 in 1991-95 and 92 in 2001-2005.
- The US has 9,200 electric generating units with a total of more than 1,000,000 megawatts of generating capacity - most of them were constructed in the 1960s or earlier.
- The current electrical network has 14,000 transmission substations, including 4500 large substations, and the average age of a substation transformer is more than 40 years - beyond their expected life span. Substations are a critical component of our distribution system, and a loss of only 4% of transmission substations would result in a 60% loss of connectivity.
- As to the country's 300,000 miles of transmission lines, since 1982 peak demand for electricity has exceeded transmission growth by almost 25% each year - but only 668 miles of new interstate transmission lines were built between  2000 and 2008.