Harold DePriest, president and CEO of EPB will give a presentation, “ Engineering a Smarter City with Smart Grid” at the Doubletree Hotel, 407 Chestnut St. on Feb. 18, from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. The program will begin at noon. County Mayor Jim Coppinger will provide closing remarks. Tickets are $20 for a single ticket, and $180 for a corporate table of eight.
Officials said, "EPB’s Smart Grid is being developed to reduce the effect of power outages on all customers in our service territory. Additionally, it will allow for greater operational efficiency and more options for customers. EPB calls it a Smarter Grid, because it is not only intelligent, but it is also self-healing and interactive."
The Smarter Grid is already showing benefits to the community in terms of reduced outage impact for customers and power quality improvements, officials said. For example, on July 5, 2012 a violent windstorm came through the area, causing damage to the electric system and knocking power out to thousands of homes and businesses.
Because of the Smarter Grid, 55% of homes and businesses affected by the storm either saw no outage at all or a very brief outage. Additionally, the restoration effort was complete 1½ days sooner than it would have been in prior years, saving roughly $1.4 million in restoration costs.