_800MHz_
- Source?
"The utilities have not been forced to innovate. They won't innovate on their own because there are no customers at risk - no competition."
- Also, what data can you provide to back this up? I work in the industry, and I can tell you that innovation will depend largely on the type of energy market that the utility operates in, whether or not they are a vertically integrated company, regulated or unregulated, IOU or POU, as well as a ton of other variables. So while maybe its true that not every single company is innovating, to generally say that they "won't innovate" or that there is "no competition" is simply wrong as well as spreading incorrect information about the industry.
I'd check out this is you're interested in learning more about the utility industry: https://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/15001013
You're 100% correct about the "resilience" and "efficiency" part, and we currently have software for that as well (Google "Real-Time Contingency Analysis"), but the real improvements to be made in this area would be things that generally fall under the "smart grid" buzzword. The ability to automatically switch transmission lines in and out of service during an emergency event, better and/or automatic control frequency and voltage (which we do have currently, but could be further automated), and reaction/recovery/restoration after a relay incident (for example, an automatic "Blackstart" after a voltage collapse) would all fall under the kind of improvements needed to push electric grid technologies to the next level, in my opinion.
I worked at one of the datacenters where they rolled this out. It definitely wasn't all that impressive in terms of real energy savings, it would temporarily make our PUE drop, but we'd have to make up for it after the recommendations were secured in order to account for the temporarily relaxed set points. It was mostly a PR thing from my point of view.