Michael Giberson Scientific American has an article on the start-up pains associated with smart grid development: Only one thing is worse than the lights not coming on when the switch is flicked—and that’s the lights going out right afterward. The fact that the problem is most often a burned-out lightbulb is testimony to the reliability …
Michael Giberson According to Accenture, 46 percent of consumers surveyed said they didn’t want smart grid-based energy management systems if it leads to higher electricity bills. My guess is that the other 54 percent of consumers didn’t understand the question. The summary distributed by Accenture contains several other bits of should-be-obvious information – consumers are …
Michael Giberson Obviously the electric utility industry is very much in the experiment and learning phase (also known as “trial and error”) of the smart grid. Two examples are provided by PG&E in California and Xcel in Colorado. It is tempting to rush to judgment on the impossibility of an efficient, well-run, customer-centric smart grid …
Two Stories About Integrated Utility Smart Grid Programs Read More »
Michael Giberson I noticed when posting the previous item that one of the subject tags in the Knowledge Problem system was “smart gird.” Not “grid”, but “gird.” A simple enough substitution of the “i” and “r”, and, apparently, pretty common online. Google yields a plethora of “smart gird” results (although it first redirected me to …
Michael Giberson In a white paper released yesterday, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) identified three requirements necessary for the smart grid to create value for residential customers: Pricing must provide incentives to manage energy use more efficiently and enable consumers to save money. Communication Standards must be open, flexible, secure, and limited in …
Electric Power Rate Reforms Needed for Smart Grid to Create Value Read More »
Michael Giberson Rebecca Smith reporting in the Wall Street Journal, “Obama to Name ‘Smart Grid’ Projects“: The Obama administration is expected Tuesday to name 100 utility projects that will share $3.4 billion in federal stimulus funding to speed deployment of advanced technology designed to cut energy use and make the electric-power grid more robust. When …
Taxpayer Dollars to Support Utility Smart Grid Expenses Read More »
Lynne Kiesling This week’s Economist has an outstanding and thorough article on the current status of smart grid investments in the electricity industry. It surveys recent developments from a international perspective as well as focusing on some of the specific developments in the U.S. It highlights the peak demand reduction and renewables integration benefits that …
Michael Giberson John Petersen at AltEnergyStocks comments on a recent analysis by the U.S. Postal Service of the economics of converting to an electric vehicle fleet. Petersen observes that, “after years of reading up-beat promotional materials that talk about ten-year battery lives and seven- to ten-year payback periods, it was refreshing to see a more …
Lynne Kiesling Last week Newsweek had an article on smart grid investments and projects that provides a good overview, focusing on the newly-funded Department of Energy demonstration projects. Many of you will already know more about these than the details provide in the article, but it’s a good overview if you don’t.
Lynne Kiesling I’m at a NIST smart grid workshop, where the objective is to take the identified, prioritized smart grid interoperability standards requirements and start working on the game plan for developing interoperability standards out of them. Toby Considine sat next to me yesterday morning and wrote about his observations, so I’ll spare you mine, …
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