account for developing and deploying necessary new software innovations. It is assumed that once the necessary new tech- niques are prototyped, demonstrated, and implemented in the context of a selected function, they can easily be adopted for other functions. Cost of communication links and human inter- faces such as visualization, and intelligent alarming were not included. Benefit models quantify selected significant benefits: energy cost savings and value of reduction of service interrup- tions. The methodology is fully scalable and can be adopted for a preliminary cost/benefit assessment for a system of any size. It has been applied to a generic example system and the re- sults indicate that the benefits significantly outweigh the costs. Once the R&D “entry barrier” is overcome, the costs of subse- quent implementations are of the same order of magnitude as for conventional control centers. The recent stimulus funding in the smart grid arena [5] is a harbinger of the future investments at the levels suggested in [23].