Articles under Smart Grid

Improving SAIFI & SAIDI Scores: How Engineering Software Enhances Grid Reliability

As electric utilities face increasing pressure to maintain reliable service in the face of aging infrastructure, extreme weather, and growing demand, reliability metrics like SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index) and SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) have become critical indicators of performance.

Utilities are not only judged by these numbers—they’re financially impacted by them, especially in regulatory environments where penalties or incentives are tied to reliability. Improving these scores requires more than reactive fixes; it calls for smarter system planning, real-time visibility, and advanced analytics—all of which engineering software is uniquely positioned to provide.

When paired with outage management systems and GIS integration, engineering software creates a powerful feedback loop: historical outage data informs future system improvements, while real-time diagnostics accelerate restoration. This leads to a more resilient grid, fewer customer interruptions, and significantly improved SAIFI and SAIDI scores. We discuss below how you can integrate engineering software to improve your grid reliability.

Why Grid Reliability Matters and Needs to be Monitored

Reliable electric service isn’t just a customer expectation—it’s a critical necessity for homes, businesses, and public infrastructure. Power interruptions can disrupt daily life, halt business operations, and even threaten public safety, especially in sensitive environments like hospitals, data centers, and industrial facilities.

For utilities, poor reliability can damage reputation, erode customer trust, and trigger regulatory consequences. That’s why monitoring grid performance isn’t optional—it’s essential. By tracking reliability in real time and over the long term, utilities can better allocate resources, prioritize upgrades, and respond more effectively to emerging challenges such as extreme weather, distributed generation, and increasing load demands. Proactive monitoring lays the foundation for smarter decision-making and long-term system resilience.

Engineering software gives utilities the ability to model, analyze, and optimize their distribution systems with precision and speed that manual processes simply can’t match. By simulating load flow, identifying potential fault locations, and evaluating switching scenarios, these tools allow utilities to proactively address vulnerabilities before they lead to outages. Software-enabled grid simulations can also help determine the most effective locations for protective devices, capacitors, and reclosers—key components in minimizing the duration and frequency of service interruptions.

Key Metrics Used to Measure Grid Reliability

Utilities rely on several standardized indices to measure and benchmark system reliability, with SAIDI, SAIFI, and CAIDI being the most common:

System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI) measures how frequently the typical customer has a power outage over a given period—typically one year. A lower SAIFI indicates fewer interruptions.
System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) tracks the total duration of interruptions experienced by the average customer. Lower SAIDI values reflect faster outage response and restoration.
Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI) calculates the average time required to restore service to customers after an outage and is derived by dividing SAIDI by SAIFI.

These metrics help utilities identify patterns, compare performance against industry benchmarks, and prioritize infrastructure investments. They also play a central role in regulatory reporting and incentive structures, making them essential tools for accountability and operational improvement.

How to Improve SAIFI & SAIDI Scores with Engineering Software

Engineering software equips utilities with advanced tools to proactively enhance grid reliability by addressing the root causes of outages and streamlining restoration efforts. By integrating analytical capabilities into daily operations, utilities can transition from reactive responses to strategic system management, leading to measurable improvements in SAIFI and SAIDI scores.

Conduct System Modeling & Load Flow Analysis: Advanced engineering analysis tools enable utilities to create precise models of their distribution networks, simulating power flows under various conditions. This allows for the identification of overloaded circuits, voltage imbalances, and potential failure points before they result in outages. For instance, utilities utilizing such modeling have reported significant reductions in outage frequency and duration, contributing to improved reliability metrics.
Analyze Historical Outage Data: Integrating engineering models with historical outage data helps utilities uncover patterns and trends in system failures. By mapping outage frequency and duration to specific assets or geographic areas, utilities can prioritize upgrades and interventions where they will have the most significant impact on reliability. This data-driven approach has been instrumental in enhancing grid performance across various service territories.
Use Data to Implement Predictive Maintenance: Predictive analytics powered by engineering software allow utilities to monitor equipment health in real-time and forecast potential failures. By addressing issues before they lead to outages, utilities can minimize both the frequency and duration of service interruptions. For example, United Power implemented a proactive maintenance strategy in 2017, which included analyzing data across thousands of miles of line to isolate underperforming segments. This approach led to a SAIFI score of 0.65 in 2023, indicating that the average customer experienced fewer than one outage throughout the year, and a SAIDI score consistently below 60 minutes—less than half the national average of approximately 120 minutes.
Improve Fault Location, Isolation, and Service Restoration: Engineering software enhances fault location capabilities, significantly reducing the time required to identify and address issues on the grid. When combined with automated switching and remote monitoring, utilities can quickly isolate faults and restore power to unaffected areas. This rapid response not only improves customer satisfaction but also contributes to lower SAIDI and SAIFI scores.
Optimize Team and Response Coordination: Integrating engineering software with outage management systems (OMS) and geographic information systems (GIS) facilitates seamless communication between control centers and field crews. This alignment ensures that response teams have access to accurate, real-time data, enabling faster and more efficient restorations. Utilities adopting such integrated systems have reported enhanced coordination and reduced outage durations.
Simulate DER Integration and Microgrid Islanding: As distributed energy resources (DERs) and microgrids become more prevalent, engineering software can simulate their integration into the grid. Modeling microgrid islanding and DER responses to grid events helps ensure stability during disruptions, supporting localized reliability and minimizing broader service interruptions. This proactive planning is crucial for maintaining high reliability standards in modern, decentralized energy systems.

By leveraging these capabilities, utilities can shift from merely managing outages to preventing them, transforming complex data into strategic actions that strengthen the grid and enhance key reliability metrics.

Common Questions about Grid Reliability

What is a good SAIFI number?

A “good” SAIFI score typically reflects fewer interruptions per customer per year. While acceptable values can vary by region and utility size, a SAIFI below 1.0 is generally considered strong—meaning the average customer experiences fewer than one outage annually. Top-performing utilities, especially in suburban or urban areas with well-maintained infrastructure, may achieve SAIFI scores in the 0.5–0.8 range.

How are SAIDI and SAIFI calculated?

SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index) is calculated by dividing the total number of customer interruptions by the total number of customers served:
SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) is calculated by dividing the total duration of all customer interruptions by the total number of customers served:

These metrics help utilities track how often and how long customers are losing power, on average.

What is the difference between SAIFI and SAIDI?

While both are key reliability indicators, they measure different aspects of service interruptions:

SAIFI focuses on frequency—how often the average customer experiences a power outage.
SAIDI focuses on duration—how long the average customer is without power over a given time period.

Together, these metrics provide a more complete picture of utility reliability.

What are Major Event Days?

Major Event Days (MEDs) are days when extreme weather, natural disasters, or other large-scale disruptions cause unusually high levels of outages that fall outside of normal operating conditions. Because these events can significantly skew performance metrics, utilities often exclude MEDs when calculating standard SAIDI and SAIFI scores for regulatory or benchmarking purposes. The criteria for identifying MEDs are outlined by the IEEE 1366 standard.

Building a Smarter, More Reliable Grid

Improving SAIFI and SAIDI scores isn’t just about meeting benchmarks—it’s about delivering dependable service, gaining operational efficiency, and earning the trust of your customers. With increasing demands on the grid and tighter regulatory expectations, utilities need more than manual processes and best guesses. They need intelligent, integrated tools that bring clarity to complex systems and drive meaningful improvements.

Milsoft’s engineering analysis and outage management solutions are built to do exactly that. From predictive modeling and load flow analysis to fault isolation and DER simulation, our software helps utilities identify risks, streamline responses, and enhance reliability—backed by decades of real-world success.

Ready to take your reliability metrics to the next level? Contact Milsoft Utility Solutions today to learn how our platform can help you strengthen your grid and exceed your performance goals.

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How Automation is Changing Utility Management

This post was updated March 27, 2025 to include new insights.

America’s security, economy, health, and safety all depend on the continuous delivery of electricity. Yet, our electric infrastructure is being pushed to operate more efficiently as it ages beyond its expected lifespan.

Modernizing the grid using smart grid technology and control software is one way to make our electric grid more resilient. These technologies work together to control the delivery of electricity reliably and efficiently throughout the system and to detect and reduce the impact of outages and problems.

What Power Grids Were Like before Smart Grid Technology

Without smart grid technology, the nation’s power grid is a series of connected networks that are inter-dependent. Failure in one part of the system can quickly lead to failures down the line which cascades into collapse.

A good example of this inter-dependency is the 2003 blackout that began in Ohio when a tree branch took out a transmission line. Over the course of an hour, a series of errors took out two more transmission lines which triggered a cascading failure. Approximately 50 million people from Michigan to New England and Canada lost power, according to the Daily News.

Without smart grid technology, power restoration moves more slowly as failure points must be located and repaired. In contrast, smart grid power management software allows problems and failures to be detected early or avoided completely. When problems do occur, power is rerouted, and assets and personnel are deployed quickly to prevent systemic failure and shorten downtimes.

How does a Smart Grid Work?

Using power management software, computer processing, advanced sensors, and two-way communication technologies, smart grid technologies map and monitor the power grid continuously. Built in relays sense faults in the substations and recover automatically. Automated switches re-route power to keep the system working.

Operators, using smart grid technology, monitor the entire power grid, quickly locating and repairing problems. They are able to access all needed information about the grid stability instantly from one location. Prior to smart grid technology, technicians had to check sensors and function at multiple sites along the grid.

How is Software Automation Affecting the Electrical Grid?

Software automation provides multiple layers of protection for power generation, distribution, and grid security. Power management software monitors and independently controls each section of the entire system. Problems or failures in one section of the grid can be isolated, protecting neighboring sections. If any part of the system is compromised, the threat is isolated and the system reroutes power along the grid to contain the problem.

Smart grid technologies also offers numerous additional benefits to power generation and distribution systems, including:

Reducing frequency and duration of power outages
Restoring services faster after an outage
Potential for self-healing without human intervention
Improved grid security and reduced vulnerability
Allowing consumers access to usage data, better controlling consumption and costs
Managing and reducing peak loads
Rapid isolation of failures
Preventing cascading failures by rerouting of power around the problem
Increased integration of renewable energy sources
Automated control of battery storage of power
Reduced operational costs
Improved fault detection
More reliable electric supply

Why Do We Need Smart Grids?

As our electric grid ages, governments, regulators, and consumers are looking for ways to improve energy generation and delivery to homes and businesses. A smart grid is a comprehensive solution that helps reduce the waste of electricity and energy costs. This technology allows better control of energy delivery and management.

Smart grid technologies are essential to transitioning to renewable energy sources and balancing energy demand. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar power are variable, requiring energy management software that distributes energy efficiently and regulates energy storage for use during peak usage.

How Automation Benefits Utility Companies

Automation in utility management goes far beyond convenience—it is transforming how utilities operate at every level. From infrastructure monitoring to customer service, automation improves reliability, safety, and operational efficiency.

Elimination of Manual Tasks: Traditional utility operations often rely on manual meter readings, field inspections, and paper-based records. Automation replaces these processes with digital monitoring, remote diagnostics, and smart meters. This not only saves time but also drastically reduces the potential for human error.
Assured Cost-Savings and Efficiency: Automated systems optimize energy distribution by balancing loads and minimizing energy losses across the grid. By automating repetitive tasks and routine maintenance, utilities can reduce labor costs, lower operating expenses, and reallocate resources to high-priority projects.
Analysis and Reporting: Automated software solutions collect and analyze vast amounts of data in real time. This enables utility companies to generate detailed reports on usage trends, system performance, and infrastructure health—helping them make more informed decisions without manual data crunching.
Improve Energy Management: With real-time data collection and forecasting capabilities, automation supports smarter energy allocation and demand response. This is particularly valuable in managing peak loads and integrating variable renewable sources like wind and solar.
Decision Making: Automation equips utility operators with actionable insights. From predictive maintenance alerts to load forecasting, automated tools support faster, more accurate decision-making that directly improves reliability and service continuity.
Employee Safety: Automated fault detection and remote diagnostics reduce the need for field technicians to enter hazardous environments. This enhances worker safety by minimizing exposure to high-voltage areas, extreme weather, or emergency conditions.
Better Service: Automation leads to fewer outages, quicker recovery times, and better communication with customers. By automating outage notifications and service updates, utilities can keep customers informed and reduce frustration during service interruptions.
Shorten Your Utility Bill Cycles: Smart metering and automated billing systems streamline the billing process, enabling faster and more accurate invoicing. Customers benefit from clearer statements and timely billing, while utility companies improve cash flow and reduce administrative burdens.
Return on Investment: While the initial cost of automation technology can be significant, the long-term return on investment is substantial. Lower maintenance costs, fewer outages, improved operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction all contribute to a strong business case for automation.

Artificial Intelligence in Energy and Utilities

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a foundational technology in the utilities sector, enhancing the capabilities of automation and delivering new levels of insight and adaptability. AI enables utilities to move from reactive operations to predictive and even prescriptive decision-making—transforming everything from grid performance to customer engagement.

Predictive Maintenance: AI-driven analytics can identify patterns in equipment performance that signal impending failure. By predicting maintenance needs before breakdowns occur, utilities can avoid costly outages and extend the lifespan of critical assets such as transformers, substations, and circuit breakers.
Grid Optimization: AI algorithms analyze real-time data to detect inefficiencies, balance loads, and optimize energy flow across the grid. This is especially valuable for integrating distributed energy resources (DERs), such as rooftop solar or wind farms, which require dynamic adjustments to maintain grid stability.
Demand Forecasting: Accurate forecasting is critical for both energy generation and cost management. AI enhances forecasting models by incorporating historical usage data, weather patterns, and even real-time consumer behavior to better predict demand and align energy supply accordingly.
Enhanced Cybersecurity: As power systems become more connected, they also become more vulnerable. AI is increasingly used to monitor networks for suspicious activity, detect anomalies, and respond to cybersecurity threats faster than human operators could.
Intelligent Customer Engagement: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are helping utilities provide 24/7 customer service, answering billing questions, outage updates, and account support. AI can also personalize communications, helping customers better understand their energy usage and how to reduce costs.
Renewable Energy Integration: AI helps manage the variable nature of renewable energy sources by predicting generation levels and adjusting grid operations in real time. This supports greater reliance on clean energy without compromising reliability.

What does the Future of Utility Management Look Like?

The utilities industry is evolving rapidly. Rising costs, changing load patterns, and new smart grid technologies are driving innovation toward a bright future.

Additionally, regulatory changes and renewed interest in green energy sources is moving the industry in new directions:

Decarbonization – Cleaner, emission-free electricity sources such as wind and power are growing
Decentralization – The power grid continues to decentralize with more reliance on localized power generation and battery storage rise.
Electrification – As electrical power increasingly comes from wind and solar, electrification is increasing in every area of technology, including transportation, heating, and industrial use.

As power companies face new challenges and expectations, disruptive forces are impacting the industry, forcing energy consumers and providers to react to changing market conditions. These disruptive forces fall into four main categories, according to a recent article by Deloitte.

New digital technologies are creating new opportunities for new products and services
New performance challenges and expectations
New energy technologies
New practices and business models

Smart grid technology and utility management software will allow the collection of real-time information data on electricity generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption. Real-time data allows utility providers to make better decisions in balancing resources and forecasting production costs and demand. Over the next decade, technologies and applications will continue to evolve, increasing flexibility, changing business models and how data is collected.

Thank You For Attending!

This year’s Users Conference, which concluded on Thursday, June 4th, introduced several new benchmarks. Among these, record attendance, the addition of FieldSyte as a new dedicated session tract, our 35th year of incorporation, and news for all those in attendance that we’ll be right back in Nashville for 2025 on June 3rd, our first back-to-back conference at the same venue. So, if you missed the Milsoft Conference and Nashville experience, you’ll have one more shot at it next year.

For those of you who did come, a huge thank you! We sent you a survey asking you to rate your experience. We’d love to hear from you!

Stay tuned for solution-specific news coming soon.

Is Solar Power Changing Electrical Distribution?

As recently as 2015, solar-powered energy was considered unreliable and ultimately unworkable on a mass scale. The think-tank Strata stated only a few years ago that “solar power is not physically reliable because it is inconsistent, inefficient, and cannot meet electricity demand.” However, opinion seems to have shifted recently — and shifted quite dramatically. According to Bloomberg, the International Energy Agency has declared that “renewables are set to overtake coal this decade as the world’s favorite fuel to generate electricity.” And Government Technology reported that Google has been purchasing significant amounts of energy from Tennessee-based solar farms to power its data centers.

Yet this increasing desire for and reliance on solar power isn’t without growing pains. Vox highlighted how blackouts/brownouts/outages have risen due to natural disasters and pointed out how the growing presence of clean technology is challenging the extant grid architecture. One thing is sure: Electrical technology is changing, and solar power is playing a large part in it.

How the Electric Grid is Changing to Include Solar

In order to understand how the electric grid is changing to include solar, it helps to know how the system works in the first place. The EPA explains, “The electricity grid is a complex machine in which electricity is generated at centralized power plants and decentralized units and is transported through a system of substations, transformers and transmission lines that deliver the product to its end-user, the consumer. Since large amounts of energy cannot be stored, electricity must be produced as it is used.”

At its highest level, the power/electric grid breaks down into three broad sections structured roughly around the continental divide, namely the Western Interconnect, the Easter Interconnect, and the Texas Interconnect. Within these areas exist smaller wholesale markets that buy and sell electricity among themselves before delivering it to retail consumers, as well as vertically integrated operations that provide power directly to end users. Finally, retail providers offer electricity to consumers through either state-regulated entities or in competitive arrangements.

It’s at this local level that the electrical grid is shifting itself to add in solar power options. However, the availability of these options depends on a number of very specific factors, some of which we will delve into below.

The Complexities and Challenges of Solar Energy Delivery

As the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) explains, “Utility-scale solar and wind power plants are conceptually similar to conventional generators — they generate electricity where the necessary resources are located, typically in remote areas where the fuel (sunlight or wind) is most abundant. These attributes — consolidating variable individual loads into more predictable regional loads, siting plants near their resource base, and extensive transmission lines — help the grid provide electric power with good reliability and low cost.”

This sounds simple enough. Still, it’s worth noting that delivering solar power in a distributed energy network faces significant challenges and complexities. For instance, photovoltaics (i.e., systems that convert light into electricity by using semiconducting materials such as gallium arsenide, lead, or tin) cannot provide power on demand, and the same is usually true of concentrated solar power systems (i.e., systems that use mirrors to focus sunlight onto a central power receiver). That means such power must be used as it is generated. This need is underscored by how relatively difficult it is to store electrical power when compared to other types of energy, such as hydropower, geothermal, coal, or nuclear.

Finally, some of the early skeptics of solar power had a point: Distributed energy generation cannot solely rely on solar power given its variability. NREL states, “While small amounts of [photovoltaic] power can be incorporated into the grid with few changes, the development of grid-monitoring technologies (i.e., the so-called Smart Grid), and more cost-effective electricity storage systems will be needed to deploy large amounts of [photovoltaic] power.” A reticence to spend the capital necessary for such costly upgrades is a major roadblock. (More on that down below.)

How Solar is Increasing as a Source of Renewable Energy

Despite such inherent challenges, solar power is experiencing significant and sustained growth. Writing for Forbes, Dr. Joshua D. Rhodes of The University of Texas at Austin points out that solar energy is expected to far outstrip other renewables all the way through 2050. He states, “Total installed U.S. PV capacity is expected to more than double over the next five years as grid interconnection queues from California to Texas to the Mid Atlantic are full of solar projects. Thus, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that solar PV installer will be the fastest growing job between 2018 and 2028, with a median annual wage of over $42,000.” Indeed, California (which has more photovoltaic capacity than any other state) has been able to periodically meet more than half of its energy demand with solar sources.

Is Renewable Energy Outpacing Distribution?

It’s worth noting that while renewable energy sources in general — and solar power in particular — generally can’t outpace the distribution networks of which they’re a part, sometimes they have been ignored by traditional power providers. In their book Operation of Distributed Energy Resources in Smart Distribution Networks, Emilio Ghiani and Giuditta Pisano noted how renewable energy sources were once “considered as negative loads to be connected and forgotten.”

However, that seems to be changing. Despite recent year over year declines in smart-grid investment, Statista reports approximately 87 million consumer smart meters have been installed. Additionally, such systems currently deliver 11,637 trillion BTUs of renewable energy, and that number looks poised to only rise.

Ways Solar Power is Impacting the Market

From undervalued energy source to an increasingly valuable production technology, solar energy is impacting the energy market in fascinating ways. The periodical Energy Post reports that growth in solar power will cause economic impacts such as:

Changing demand for certain types of traditional energy
The displacement of pricier renewable energy sources
Increasing cycling expenses
Increasing electricity price spikes

Given both the positive and negative impacts of America’s increasing reliance on solar power, it’s important that your utility runs as efficiently as possible. Milsoft’s software can help you manage your grid effectively and provide reliable service to your valued customers.

NRECA Announces Team for REACT Cybersecurity Project

ARLINGTON, Va. — The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) today announced a collaboration between N-Dimension Solutions, Inc., Milsoft Utility Solutions, and NRTC to develop “REACT”, a tool to rapidly detect cyberattacks and compromised utility systems.

REACT will advance the technologies of Essence, a prototype cybersecurity technology, with the Team’s existing commercial technologies in order to dramatically reduce the time it takes to detect a cybersecurity breach. REACT has the potential to benefit more than 3,000 utilities across the country.

“We are excited to work with NRECA and the rest of the REACT team to take our existing cybersecurity technology, enhance it, and create the next generation of cybersecurity solutions for utilities,” said Tom Ayers, President and CEO of N-Dimension.

Steve Collier, Director of Smart Grid Strategies at Milsoft agreed. “This is an unprecedented project that will enable our customers to benefit from enhanced cybersecurity”.

As Doug Lambert, NRTC’s Director of Technical Solutions, explained, “This technology is cutting-edge. REACT will be faster and more responsive than any other product out in the market today.”

REACT is funded by a competitive grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. The program is managed by NRECA’s Business and Technology Strategies (BTS) unit. BTS provides guidance to electric cooperatives to help them make sound decisions, embrace opportunities, solve industry challenges, and continue to provide affordable and reliable electrical power.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is the national service organization that represents the nation’s more than 900 not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric cooperatives, which provide service to 42 million people in 47 states.