Southern Company (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.) has selected Siemens Power Transmission & Distribution Inc.'s (Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.) Spectrum Power 3 energy management system (EMS) to monitor, control and optimize the reliability of its transmission system, consisting of 27,000 miles (43,452 km) of transmission lines, 3400 substations and more than 300,000 acres (121,406 hectares) of rights-of-way.

An EMS is a complex system of computer-aided tools that gathers real-time data from substations, plants and neighboring utilities, and delivers the data to operators, advanced power systems applications and other supporting applications. The operators and associated applications then use the data to perform transmission system operations, modeling, analysis and other critical functions.

The new EMS will replace systems at Georgia Power, Alabama Power, Mississippi Power, Gulf Power and a centralized Power Coordination Center, all with emergency backup sites.