Mission

The mission of the Electric Distribution Program (which refers collectively to the Electric Distribution Program and the GridWise Initiative) is to transform today's electric distribution infrastructure for increased affordability, reliability, security, and resilience, through integration of advanced communications, information, sensors & controls, and distributed energy resources (DER) with electric power systems. 

This mission is supported by the Program's progress toward meeting its performance goal: 

By 2015, demonstrate a smart, automated network of distributed utilities to achieve a 10% peak load reduction through improved asset utilization and demand/load management, building on the backbone of an open but secure distribution system architecture, under the industry-supported GridWise framework, that is also responsive to providing customer choice in electricity costs vs. values, as well as infrastructure security against all disturbance events. 

The central strategy employed by the Program to achieve the mission/goal above is a comprehensive set of R&D partnerships involving other Federal programs, State programs, and the private sector.