---
title: "T&D Webinar | Let’s Talk: Coordinating Distribution Automation and Communications Strategies"
description: To build a distribution automation strategy that aligns with your communications strategy, bring the DA team and the IT team together.
image: https://info.burnsmcd.com/hubfs/TD_Webinar/new-webinar/final-cards/TND_KCM_2020Webinar1DistributionAutovsComms_17021_Tile.jpg
---

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## Next Generation (NxG) Webinar Series

### To watch webinar please register below

  

## Let’s Talk: Coordinating Distribution Automation and Communications Strategies

*Tuesday, June 30 | 1 p.m. Central*

As utilities add intelligence and self-healing capabilities to their distribution grids, they need to make decisions regarding distribution automation schemes and communication networks. For example, does the area require a make-before-break load transfer scheme for a hospital that requires reliable power, and thus needs a high bandwidth connection on licensed spectrum such as private LTE or fiber communications? Or is a basic flip-flop scheme with ADMS supervision the right solution, with the existing AMI mesh network as an acceptable communications solution? These decisions are regularly made independently and without understanding the impacts to the rest of the organization. Frustration can ensue.

This webinar will address the reasons for building a communications strategy in concert with your distribution automation strategy. By bringing together the distribution automation team and the IT team, utilities can consider both short- and long-term distribution automation objectives and minimize limitations of their communications capabilities as field area network needs evolve.

### Presenters

![Calabro](https://info.burnsmcd.com/hubfs/TD_Webinar/Calabro.jpg)

### Meghan Calabro  | Burns & McDonnell

Meghan Calabro is the distribution modernization director at Burns & McDonnell. Her team works with electric utilities to prepare the grid for some of the biggest challenges in its existence — aging distribution infrastructure, major regulatory changes, proliferation of distributed energy resources, and demands for increased reliability and resiliency. Projects in her group range from infrastructure design and automation to IT/OT convergence.

![Jenny Macy 11580](https://info.burnsmcd.com/hubfs/TD_NextPracticesForum_01980/Jenny%20Macy%2011580.jpg)

### Jenny Reitmeier | Burns & McDonnell

Jenny Reitmeier is a Networks, Integration & Automation department manager at Burns & McDonnell. Her background includes electric utility SCADA and communications, as well as substation and distribution automation. She has experience investigating the business case for distribution field communications, designing the actual networks, and conducting system settings and analysis for distribution automation schemes.

 

[ Return to library](https://info.burnsmcd.com/webinar/next-generation-utility?hsLang=en)

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