Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Groarke: Grid data lacks the coverage required for real-time automated decisions

David Groarke · The early days of AI on the grid · Mar 8, 2024 · at 35:17

Energy strategist David Groarke breaks down current power grid telemetry limitations (AMI, SCADA, PMUs) to explain barriers to full automation.

0:00 / 0:21exact quote · 21.4s

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“The data right now is, is not available, right, for, let's say, real-time decision-making across the grid, right? Like, what we have is AMI, right, which is minutes to hours. We have SCADA, which is, you know, seconds to minutes, and then we have PMUs, which are kind of millisecond frequency and granularity.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Grid data is currently insufficient for real-time automated decision-making across the power grid, with AMI providing minutes-to-hours data, SCADA providing seconds-to-minutes data, and PMUs providing millisecond granularity.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Every leg of David Groarke's statement matches power systems engineering literature, IEEE standards, and DOE grid modernization findings as of early 2024. First, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) intervals standardly operate at 15 minutes to 1 hour. Second, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems typically operate on polling cycles of 2 to 4 seconds (extending to minutes for certain remote endpoints). Third, Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) operate under IEEE C37.118 standards at 30 to 60+ samples per second, providing millisecond-level time granularity. Finally, grid data across the entire system remained insufficient for real-time automated decision-making due to sparse PMU coverage at the distribution level, integration challenges across multi-rate telemetry streams, and standard control center reliance on manual operator interventions and SCADA-rate state estimation.

IEEE C37.118 standards establish PMU reporting rates at 30–60+ frames per second (millisecond granularity).
Standard power distribution AMI telemetry captures data in 15-minute to 1-hour interval blocks.
Conventional utility SCADA systems operate on 2–4 second asynchronous polling cycles.
DOE and IEEE state-estimation surveys as of early 2024 confirm that synchronized wide-area automated closed-loop grid control remained constrained by limited PMU coverage across distribution networks and multi-rate telemetry bottlenecks.

Checked against

[1] researchgate.net [2] scribd.com [3] researchgate.net [4] upenn.edu [5] ijraset.com [6] iea-isgan.org [7] keentelengineering.com [8] electroind.com

AMI SCADA PMU sampling rate latency data granularity DOE IEEE AMI 15 minute hourly SCADA 2 4 seconds PMU 30 60 Hz synchrophasor DOE grid modernization real time automated control data limitations AMI SCADA PMU NERC PMU SCADA sampling rate grid visibility automated control

assessed as of 2026-09-02

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

AMI PMUs power grid SCADA

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