Electronics.ca Publications is a premier research network and publishing company that focuses on technology and market research for the electronics industry. A new report released indicated that the global market for enabling technologies for the smart grid was poised for growth during the next five years.

According to the Electronics ca report, the distributed energy generation and storage segment and the sensing measurement and control segment were projected to increase by a CAGR of 9.2 percent and three percent respectively, while the smallest segment, the transmission lines, was estimated to have the highest growth rate with a CAGR of 87.2 percent.

Looking at the U.S. electrical grid and the role it has played in national electrification for the last hundred years, it can be considered to be an engineering marvel. However, the grid, with more than 300,000 transmission lines, has become inefficient over the years. Massive blackouts in the Northeast in 2003 stand testimony to the vulnerability of the grid.

According to the Department of Energy, the "average" outage affected 15 percent more consumers from 1996 to 2000 than from 1991 to 1995 and 41 percent more outages affected 50,000 or more consumers in the second half of the 1990s than in the first half of the decade.

This is a disturbing trend as power outages and blackouts affect the economy of the country. In fact, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study showed that both factors cost the economy an estimated $80 billion annually, which was compounded by the inconvenience and frustration of the consumers during a power outage.

With the robustness and reliability of the grid at stake, governments and utilities in the U.S. are looking at alternative technologies that would build a self-healing 21st century grid that generates high power and runs efficiently.

Smart grid technologies are being touted as alternatives that will help consumers to manage energy use better and integrate decentralized generation. Rather than being a specific technology, the smart grid is a set of related technologies that help consumers to efficiently use energy, reduce costs integrating decentralized generation and storage technologies.

While smart grid technologies are gaining momentum over the next five years, products using these technologies will increase market penetration. This will open up new avenues for revenue for providers of smart grid technologies.