The Grid doesn’t get better because we keep on relying on central planning to make it better. Any efforts developed exclusively by the current stakeholders and run through the utilities commissions will predictable and incrementalist. There is one (at least) that is not. The GridWise Architectural Council is trying to create open interoperable protocols to enable vibrant markets to develop, ones that are not driven by or yoked to the lumbering old style utilities companies.
GridWise looks to transform the production, delivery, and consumption of energy by adopting an open standards-based architecture across the entire power grid. GridWise makes no assumptions that future power markets will look as they do now. GridWise applies the latest approaches of Information Technology to the problem of grid modernization, and envisions a future in which the electric power grid is an information-rich, transactive network of decentralized economic agents. GridWise anticipates that opening up the interfaces to each business activity of the Grid will open electric power markets to innovation and create more choice and product differentiation for consumers.
Most folks are not going to live off the Grid, in my opinion. They might live what I call “near grid”. This means end points, whether homes or businesses, take responsibility for their own reliability. This will co-develop with approaches to storage, whether fancy batteries, chemical reactions, or even the water storage tank forty feet in the air I grew up with on the ranch. Live power pricing will drive storage development better than any number of central government programs; better storage will make responsiveness to price signals easier. From there, every means of alternate energy, no matter how unreliable, become another way to charge the storage. Sites will have multiple generation strategies depending upon their location, winds, sun coverage, thermal posture….
OBIX will package underlying control systems as services. Service definitions make meaningful statements of security and policy possible. Service definitions of each system will enable ad hoc discovery and control by software agents.
These agents may live at the home, the office, or at the hosting site of the 3rd party energy and maintenance manager. These agents will read live meter readings and live energy prices. There will be a competitive marketplace for the software used by these agents. The best will expand building amenity and responsiveness as well as reducing the costs of energy and maintenance.