“Electric utilities now find themselves making three classes of transformations: improvement of infrastructure, called the strong grid in China; addition of the digital layer, which is the essence of the smart grid; and business process transformation, necessary to capitalize on the investments in smart technology.” (–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid)
As a business analyst with a background in Smart Grid, it was nice to recognize myself in this sentence. It’s true that the Smart grid technology is not just about getting more/better data; you have to rework your expectations and rebuild your reporting in order to make use of it.
The difference between “one reading every two months” and “data every fifteen minutes” is not just more data — it’s a whole new ball game.