El Paso Electric’s Distribution Automation (DA) Project involved installation of new switches, relays, fault locators, and sensors on eight distribution circuits. The equipment enables automated response to grid disturbances and helps operators more quickly diagnose outages to reduce restoration times for customers on those circuits. A new supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) communications network allows for integration of real‐time data from the sensor equipment with the distribution management system (DMS) to provide grid operators with significantly enhanced visibility into the state of the system. The project addressed specific reliability needs in two separate service areas: one in Van Horn, Texas, and one in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.