Smart Grid

Thomas Friedman and "The End of Green"

In a recent blog post titled "The End of Green", Thomas Friedman ponders whether the current troubles in the financial markets will end investments in sustainable technology, particularly in energy. In his conclusion, he writes:

What we are seeing in this crisis is the need for a whole new financial architecture-and people are recognizing that some problems are just too big to solve unless we approach them systematically. As it is with our economy, so it is with our ecosystem: we need a new system, and we are going to have to think things through very carefully and make some hard choices to get it right.

Although Friedman describes the risks and the opportunities better than anyone, in this point I think while his aim is true, his target selection is off...

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SCADA Security, Building Systems, and First Response

The security of the "internet of Things" and the security of the wider internet are about to collide. The Systems that have been hidden or off line will be on-line. Embedded systems, building systems, power supply and distribution must all change their security model. Eggshell security, the hard shell on the outside and no internal security, will be torn apart not only by the Smart Grid, and all its participants and influencers, but by new models for energy interaction as microgrids, pocket generation, and on-site storage increase the number of participants.
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Divvying Up Grid Interoperability

The NIST Grid Interoperability Workgroups began by splitting into work groups along traditional market segments. I think the initial cuts (I2G, B2G, H2G&V, T&D) (Industry, Building, Home (and vehicle) to Grid, and Transmission & Distribution) were necessary, I think keeping them makes it far too easy to pave the cow paths, to streamline existing market models while allowing minimal room for new markets to develop. As I look across the groups, they feel to me as if they are split up incorrectly. The home deserves the same DR possibilities as does the office. A hospital may want the same grid information as does the data center. The privacy liability incurred by the utility developing intimate knowledge of the home operations may be as great as they would incur in a bank.
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Free markets are Live Markets

The Wall Street Journal looked at Texas Energy price increases this year and got nearly everything wrong. The big changes in electrical prices in Texas this year mirror the price changes in all energy markets. It is unclear to me how people think that *any* industry, no matter how regulated, can repeal supply and demand for its primary supplies. Some are arguing that these price changes argue for extended market regulation. The regulated energy market is not the natural order; we have a regulated market structure only because nothing else made sense in 1908 when the current model was created in Chicago..
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