It's 60 miles to the next town. The high desert is a beautiful place but when power goes out up the canyon it takes two crews nearly all day to ride the territory looking for the downed line. Come winter, ice on the lines and the roads means risking an accident to see where the trouble is.

Currently, most power line short-circuits are reported manually which can result in long service outages and high costs in labor and equipment. Providing power at competitive prices means developing more effective ways to manage this resource. Voltage fluctuations, intrusion, conductor temperature, ice loading and insulator contamination are a problem for the whole industry. How do you handle all the variables, especially in a service area as big as a state?