Smart Grid smarts

Vermont just received approximately $69 million in federal funds to be matched by utilities for developing smart grid technologies. Tom Evslin, Douglas’ new Chief Technology Officer (Czar?) and former telecom entrepreneur says that these funds will help Vermont do in five years what would have taken eight under normal funding conditions.

More than just smart meters the grid will also open up the potential for entirely new services or improvements on existing ones, such as fire monitoring and alarms that can shut off power, make phone calls to emergency services and etc.

The Seattle Times reports that the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who transformed the telecommunications industry are now trying to do the same with the grid. The prize? There are 144 million residential meters in the U.S. “The battle for the meter is raging,” Google and several startups are also working on the creation of so-called home area networks to save energy.  

Power usage closely monitored by consumers and distributors will result in better use of available resources. Savings and efficiency are all for the good. As utilities sell power more efficiently they may also find demand dropping just as cash is needed to buildup   new services and networks. What kind of brave new grid will result? In a slightly disturbing comparison, many industry experts are comparing the new world that the power industry is entering to the one that the telecoms faced several years ago.

One expert explains  

In the days of rotary phones, the telcos had complete control and consumers didn’t have much to do with it other than pay the bill. …While the price may have dropped for traditional telco services, these companies have had a huge number of new opportunities opened up for them. We believe that the same thing will happen with the utilities market………..

Once the subscriber is in the picture, it will drive demand for new types of services and new ways of communicating. These in turn will help the utilities to invent new forms of value, and to become more innovative.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) supports this comparison.

Also like the telecom network, the Smart Grid is almost entirely owned and operated by industry. Therefore, Smart Grid interoperability and cybersecurity standards must reflect industry consensus, with active participation, and where required, leadership and coordination by government.

Vermonters watching FairPoint struggle into chapter 11 may not find anything comforting in these telecom comparisons. And besides: who understands their telecom plan?

Federal and State regulators understaffed and under budgeted will be presiding over the industry as it creates new forms of services and morphs into a new service beast.

Maybe aggressive public service watchdogs as smart as the smart grid are needed for the new market as it evolves?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.c…

. http://smart-grid.tmcnet.com/t…

http://www.nist.gov/smartgrid/