Integrating the Infrastructures

The power and energy industries are in the midst of developing integrated systems with intelligence. However, while this promises a world of new applications and improvements it also poses large challenges. While older systems were able to do much with component level intelligence future systems must increasingly rely on more sophisticated distributed computing systems. The concepts of distributed computing goes beyond communications between systems to include all the elements necessary to achieve systems that not only interoperate but interwork. Large scale interworkability implies not only the ability to get a message across a network but to have that message understood and correctly acted upon by intelligent equipment. Massively scaled systems in the future implies large scale integration and the disciplines necessary to manifest the vision. This future view poses a number of challenges that need to be recognized and responsive strategies developed. Standards in themselves are insufficient to achieve this overall vision. Disciplines such as architecture development and complex systems engineering must be considered as well as new approaches to traditional systems engineering.