Survey Result on the Best Term to Describe a Modern Electric Grid

It's probably because the grid has all the elements defined separately - intelligence, cyber physical, automation , so 'Smart Grid' encompasses all of these.

The grid has always been a dynamic challenge IMHO. While operating small systems with only thermal generation meant grappling with hostile, intermittent railway loads, highly variable aluminum plants, and rigid nuclear generation—necessitating innovations like PSPs. The advent of interconnected grids eased many of these issues, but new technologies new challenges emerged. The grid evolves constantly, like any society, and each generation of operators and engineers contributes solutions to keep it resilient and reliable. It’s this continuous adaptation that should define our smart grid.??

Thank you, Paulo, for sharing the survey, continuing this dialogue, and asking for my comments. I’ve already shared the original definition of the Smart Grid and the challenges it addressed when I introduced it in January 1998. Please see the link below. While some colleagues suggest the system has fundamentally changed, I respectfully disagree. Revisiting the 1998 presentation, the core challenges —interoperability, resilience, sustainability, security, and microgrids — remain central today and are clearly outlined on pages 5-6 of that presentation: https://lnkd.in/e9QQeiK. These challenges remain relevant. Initially, the “Smart Grid” faced pushback, so I reframed it as the “Self-Healing Grid” and later the “Smart Self-Healing Grid” and “Intelligrid” at EPRI. By 2005, “Smart Grid” gained widespread acceptance and became U.S. policy. While the term evolved, the focus shifted long ago from terminology to delivering adaptive, secure, and sustainable systems for modern society. What matters is implementing practical, scalable solutions that address resilience, security, equity, and sustainability. Let’s focus on advancing the mission with tools and actions that serve communities rather than revisiting debates over terminology.

But challenges that the grid was handling 20 years back were entirely different from what it's handling now but this survey results tells two things, first, it's a much more complicated and multi dimensional scenario now than what it used to be, say 20 years back and second (it's more true for now), people giving opinion pieces on technical matters related to grid are even the ones who know little about it now (at least those who can take a holistic view), just think about it if you had done this survey 20 years back would it still have had such variety of opinions??