When centralized control architectures were designed, power flowed from large generation plants down to passive consumers, utilities managed hundreds of large assets, data volumes were modest, and connectivity was reliable at substations.
Few of these assumptions hold today. Power flows in both directions as rooftop solar and battery storage inject back into the distribution network. Utilities now coordinate millions of small, variable, distributed assets instead of hundreds of large ones. Data volumes have multiplied by orders of magnitude as smart meters, sensors, and distributed energy resource (DER) controllers generate continuous streams.