The 21st Century promises to be the technology age of the developed world economies. While technological innovation has long been the driving force of change in the world's developed economies, especially in the United States, there promises to be a new era of change that dwarfs that of the past. Computer technology, the Internet and information technology is reshaping the economic order. The electric industry has been a major source of technological change in the past and will undoubtedly be at the forefront of change in the 21st Century.
The electric industry has spawned technological change in the past primarily through the empowerment of innovations in other industries; powering manufacturing, transportation, the processing of information and other forms of commerce, lighting streets, homes and factories and a multitude of other engines of change. The electric system consisting of transmission and distribution has remained, for a century, fundamentally unchanged. However, that is about to change. The electric energy system itself is poised to undergo fundamental change so that the system of the future will be very different from that of the past. It will change from a "dumb" system to a "smart" system. The electric utilities of Texas intend to be on the leading edge of this coming transition.