Electric‑utility field crews are being pulled in two directions at once. On the one hand, the grid is expanding and becoming more complex, as distributed generation, battery storage, and extreme-weather hardening projects add thousands of new assets to the maintenance roster.

The electric grid is becoming the most important infrastructure platform of the 21st century, yet many substations still rely on workflows designed for an analog era. Aging assets, weather volatility, and the surge of distributed energy resources (DERs) have converged to create an inflection point: utilities that digitize their substations will unlock the agility, resilience, and intelligence required for the next decade of growth. Those that do not will find themselves contending with rising O&M costs, unpredictable outages, and shareholder skepticism.

Electric utilities have long been stewards of vast data sets: kilowatt‑hour reads, outage logs, SCADA snapshots. What has shifted is the speed at which those numbers must inform strategic decisions. Today’s grid planners juggle rooftop PV ramps, EV clustering, wildfire risk, and unprecedented weather volatility, often in the same work week. Waiting days for a batch‑processed report is no longer tenable when megawatts can swing in minutes and board directives arrive with quarterly timelines.

Operations & Maintenance teams have always walked a tightrope: ensuring today’s reliability while safeguarding tomorrow’s asset health. In the past, calendar‑based inspections, periodic SCADA polls, and institutional expertise kept that balance. But today’s grid pressed by extreme weather, aging infrastructure, and rapid electrification, demands decisions in seconds, not in weeks‑long maintenance cycles. Real‑time monitoring meets that demand, converting every pole‑top device, transformer, and right‑of‑way into a live data stream that flags issues before they blossom into outages.

Modern substations stand at the intersection of two accelerating risk fronts: high-impact physical attacks and sophisticated cyber intrusions. A single transformer failure can cascade into outages, high repair and replacement costs, and a public-relations fallout.

Across the globe, utilities are facing a rising challenge: operating substations under sustained and extreme heat conditions. Whether due to climate-driven events, regional weather patterns, or year-round high ambient temperatures, elevated heat is putting unprecedented stress on critical infrastructure.

As the electric utility sector confronts aging infrastructure, a wave of retirements, and the growing complexity of the modern grid, Operations & Maintenance (O&M) professionals are under mounting pressure to do more with less. Substations, the backbone of transmission and distribution systems, are increasingly asked to operate beyond their original design parameters, all while maintaining the reliability and safety standards the public depends on.

The electric utility industry is under pressure from all sides: an aging infrastructure, the rapid growth of renewable energy, extreme weather, cybersecurity risks, and a shrinking skilled workforce. Amid these challenges, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a potential game-changer. Yet for many utility leaders, the conversation around AI often oscillates between overhyped promises and outright skepticism.

As electric utilities ramp up investments in renewables, the system-wide implications of this shift are becoming increasingly clear. Wind and solar power are clean, cost-competitive, and essential to achieving net-zero goals. But they’re also intermittent, weather-dependent, and inherently misaligned with real-time demand.

As the energy transition accelerates, utilities face growing pressure to reduce emissions, optimize capital investment, and extend the life of aging infrastructure. Much of the focus has rightly been placed on renewables, electrification, and grid-scale storage. However, a quieter, equally powerful opportunity lies in how utilities maintain their physical assets.