Low Carbon South West, Grid Scientific and the University of Bath will work in collaboration with our project partners including SSE and the National Grid, to investigate how a “coherence engine” could enable response to new failure modes in distribution networks. A coherence engine provides capability to extract maximum value from data provided by sensors and other intelligent network devices. Its role will be of key importance as software enabled devices become more prevalant, data proliferates, fault symptoms become less obvious and network and operations complexity increases. The project will bring relevant learning from the telecoms sector to help in addressing these new challenges in the electrical sector. If feasibility can be demonstrated in this case, then it is likely the coherence engine concept could be extended to address improvement in other processes in the emerging smart grid.