The 2014 IEEE PES Transmission & Distribution Conference & Exposition is in the Windy City, bringing a half-century of industry innovation to the biggest and most exciting conference yet!

Check out Cisco's presence at the IEEE show:McCormick Place; West Hall; Level 3,2301 S. LakeShore Drive; Chicago, IL 60616, and learn more about what Cisco is showing!

Here's a run down of the demos you can see:

Field Area Network showcases how you can address multiple use cases such as Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), Distribution Automation (DA), and Remote Workforce Management all over a single, multi-service IP network platform. The latest additions to the Connected Grid product portfolio, include the IR 500 Series Distribution Automation Gateway, PLC NAN modules and WiMAX WAN modules for the Cisco 1000 Series Connected Grid Routers, and the Connected Grid Network Management System. The Connected Grid Network Management solution allows you to securely manage multi-vendor, multi-technology, multi-service utility communication networks that can scale to millions of endpoints.

IOx showcases the best in networking operating systems, Cisco Internetworking Operating System (IOS), and the best in open source Linux working together to enable Fog computing.  IOx allows data collection to move closer to the source, sensors and systems of origin. It reduces the cost of data collection by eliminating a separate server to run the interface or application and supports demanding utility and industry environments requiring hardened devices.

SubstationAutomation showcases how you can address mission critical grid operational as well as infrastructure support use cases over a converged network infrastructure.

You will see  IEC-61850 GOOSE transport over the Ethernet station bus, partner products integration for Visualization/Control (HMI), serial DNP3/Modbus SCADA and ANSI 87L Line Current Differential Teleprotection transport over an MPLS WAN, along with video surveillance and access control for substation physical security. The latest additions to the Connected Grid product portfolio, include the IE-2000U small form factor Industrial Ethernet Series Switches for the Process bus with PRP red-box and high precision 1588 Power Profile functionality, the ASR-903 MPLS substation router with Async/Sync Serial Interface Modules, and the Prime Carrier MPLS wide areas network management system.

Cyber SecurityCisco's Agile Security Process can significantly reduce the risk of Cyber Threats. Having visibility into your network by seeing all the network traffic, learning what should and should not be there and which attacks are relevant, the Cisco Security Suite can adapt to your environment and remediate based on real threats.  This can not only save you time and money, but allow you to focus on the real world security issues by reducing the amount of false positives and false negatives.

Cisco Developer Network (CDN) program facilitates partners to work with Cisco to develop products and solutions for the utility industry. The CDN program enables development, integration with Cisco solutions and certification of IP enabled grid endpoints using Radio-frequency (RF) and Power-line communications (PLC) technologies, distributed intelligence applications and third party communication modules for IOX based field area routers, transmission and distribution technologies as well as grid security and management software.

So be there or be square! Meet up withy Cisco specialists, hear about the latest trends, and see how Cisco is even more relevant to the Utilities sector than ever before!

For those of you looking for a handy map of 'Where-to-go', here it is below:

 See you there!