I’ve been warning for a long time that Cisco’s smart grid ambitions were going to force major changes onto the industry. The first of those changes has arrived today with the release of the first detailed version of the company’s grand framework — the reference architecture it calls GridBlocks.
The main points Keep reading →
Two recent wins for General Electric’s Grid IQ offering signal not just where GE is headed. They also suggest two important trends for 2012. First, the move to “cloud-based” hosted services is under way in earnest. Second, many of the sector’s biggest players are targeting coops and municipals for their next round of deals.
Hosted services are here (and to stay). Keep reading →
The trend to set performance benchmarks for utilities got another boost with an announcement Thursday by ComEd. The Illinois utility laid out the steps it will take to meet the performance metrics built into the state’s recent smart grid bill. (Which was passed only by overriding the governor’s veto.)
The 10-year $2.6 billion modernization plan requires the state’s utilities to prove they are making progress toward 10-year goals that include improving outages by 20 percent and the duration of those outages by 15 percent. As part of its plan, ComEd will install 10 “smart” electric substations over the next five to 10 years to better predict, find and resolve power outages. Keep reading →
Nobody has ever accused utilities of being good at marketing. This lack of sales sophistication continues to haunt the industry. As you will read below, utilities around the country are facing complaints that the consumer benefits of smart meters don’t justify the cost. That’s because utilities have foolishly focused only on bill savings, failing to connect smart meters to reliability. This is particularly ironic in Connecticut, where policymakers and the public alike are up in arms about outages. Yet the state’s largest utility is only now starting to talk about the reliability benefits from grid modernization.
Even though at least 25% of U.S. homes and businesses already have a smart meter, the concept continues to face resistance in other parts of the country, according to an Associated Press story. Privacy and health concerns are often part of consumers’ fears. But the most difficult hurdle, it turns out, is documenting consumer benefits. Keep reading →
What is the single dumbest electrical component? It’s the load panel (the circuit breakers) in your home or office, which typically has a digital quotient of exactly zero. Even door locks are going digital more quickly.
An Israeli company wants to change that, and they’ve come a long way already. Computerized Electricity Systems (CES) stuffs the following functionality into its CES Smart Distribution Panel: Keep reading →
Eric Miller, former senior VP at Trilliant, has decamped the U.S. He is in search of the ideal spot to set up a software development shop focused on electric power and related clean technology. He thinks he has found it in Argentina.
The problem Keep reading →
Should smart meters ship with additional memory and processing power, plus an operating system to run applications? Several meter and communications vendors have taken a step down that road, including Echelon and SmartSynch. Now a UK firm called Sentec wants to take things to the next level. If it succeeds, next-generation meters will look less like old-fashioned meters with a communications module grafted on. And more like smart phones for energy (with apps and all).
I use the Discovery Showcase series to highlight new companies and new ideas. I bumped into this latest concept at Metering Europe in Amsterdam this October. If the concept takes off it could insulate utilities against the obsolescence issue – the fear that smart meters will need to be swapped out in just a few years. And it could send meter makers scrambling back to their labs to catch up. Keep reading →
