The fourth of three planned posts on revisiting the smart grid priority action plans ran over long. The first post discussed semantic issues. The next addressed the conflict between the business models for Managed and Collaborative Energy. In this one, I discuss the architecturally significant interfaces of the smart grid, updating my earlier musing on SGIX.
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Coordinating Energy Use and Supply (3a of 3)
in Smart Grid, Standards
Within smart grids, the interfaces at economic boundaries, that is where energy and energy services are bought and sold are the most significant. These interfaces enable negotiations over how and when and why energy is used. The legacy grid is monolithic, without well developed markets and little room for competitive intermediation services. Informational market enabling standards that expand situation awareness between participants, that enable values-based decisions, and that provide an economic basis for technology adoption are the ones that matter.
Two 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...