The target of smart grid communications, particularly in collaborative
energy space, should always be the microgrid. Some microgrids may contain a single home, or commercial building, or and industrial site—those are irrelevant details. Microgrids have a number of systems inside them that must work within the economic environment of that microgrid—and I am thinking of old economics, before the distinction of economics and ecosystem arose. Some microgrids may have a single entity inside, say a legacy BAS (Building Automation System), but the unitary microgrid is merely an artifact of...
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Small standards for small things
We were discussing standards upon which to build standards today. Before systems can communicate, there is a lot of work building the platform they communicate from. So much of the small work that will be needed for the internet of things is based upon constrained communications between resource-constrained devices. I found myself spitting out acronyms right and left - a veritable techno-glossolalia
Read MoreTwo Paths to Smart Energy in DC (2 of 3)
Standards can seem dry and uninteresting, but they find vital expression in the business models they support or prevent. One of the underlying issues in the initially contentious smart grid meeting last week was the conflict of business models. This can be resolved, but only by talking clearly about the purposes and motivations behind each model. A good first start would be to give them good names.
Smart Grid Blood on the Floor in DC (1 of 3)
Thirty ornery smart grid partisans gathered outside DC last week for a hastily convened review of the customer oriented standards development plans. To one side, the plans developed at the August Standards Development Organization (SDO) was putting critical ongoing deployments of billions of dollars infrastructure upgrades at risk, and throwing long term plans into disarray (Team A). The other side saw keeping the August plans intact necessary to enable new investment and new participation in distributed energy, and to break the iron grip of dinosaur twentieth century processes and organizations that impede new energy (Team B). There was little common ground.
The first morning passed with quiet platitudes, until Dr. David Wolman, technical lead for NIST on its smart grid project, called for "blood on the floor" during the afternoon session...