I have primary responsiblity for, among other things, networking for an electric utility company. I'm sure everyone has heard of the "smart meters" that similar companies are deploying. I don't know I'd go as far as to call it a/the "killer app" but these "smart meters" have completely changed how this company operates day-to-day.

In addition, I live in the midwest and we've had some pretty good winter storms in the last month or two. One of the biggest things, I think, is that the MTTR electric service to their customers (during/after such a storm and widespread outage) has dropped to a level that they had never before experienced.