August 30, 2010

Duke Energy's chief executive doesn't mince words.

It was early May, under stormy skies, when Jim Rogers gave the opening keynote, "Smart Grid: The Catalyst to Transform the Energy Sector," at the Smart Grid Roadshow in Cincinnati. Later that morning, he followed up about his vision for the utility industry. One of his key messages: Keep educating the customer, and pay attention to the customer's wants and needs.

"As we design products for customers, it's important to listen to what the customer wants," Rogers said. "But it's also important to notice that the customer doesn't necessarily know what he wants yet."

August 25, 2010

Juggling four bowling pins is difficult enough, even for the polished entertainer.

But add four more pins to the mix, then light one or two on fire, and you might grasp a clearer understanding of the daunting demands facing California's investor-owned utilities as they navigate toward the smart grid of the next decade.

"If you look at all of the policies and directives, 2020 is a really important year for us," said Mike Montoya, director of grid advancement at Southern California Edison (SCE). "We're going to have to do a lot of things differently than we are today. It's going to be a challenge."

August 06, 2010

The transformation may now be gradual. But it will gather steam and change the way utilities produce and deliver their electricity.

If done properly, the smart grid that enables such progress could have profound implications. The movement is just now getting its legs. But just how it stabilizes and gains footing is a matter of debate: Some say it will be consumer demand. Others say that regulators must lead while some say it must be a collective effort.

August 02, 2010

Utilities are busily crafting plans to add some smarts to their grids, which will enable them to monitor usage information in real time. For these new capabilities to take shape, they will need networks capable of moving information from their data centers to customer sites.

Wireless communications are appealing because they are easier to deploy and less expensive than wired connections. Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular, Wi-Fi and WiMAX wireless options could fill this void, but recently WiMAX has emerged as the most likely selection.

July 05, 2010 

"What I like most about my job is that I cannot exceed the imagination of my colleagues," said Byron Washom, the University of California at San Diego's director of strategic energy initiatives. "I bring in former utility colleagues of mine, and the first thing they say when they visit the [UCSD] campus is time travel."

However, for UCSD insiders like Washom, the innovations his colleagues refer to are not futuristic. They merely form the backbone of a university that predicates progress on the sustainability of its campus.