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Fortnightly Magazine - April 2008

Selling the Smart Grid - The Pitch

Two utilities win customer support for dynamic pricing and demand response.

If the recent backlash against California’s proposed new building codes proves anything, it’s that ratepayers won’t buy into the smart-metering concept by themselves. The industry will have to sell it. How then should electric utilities, municipals and cooperatives go about introducing smart grid technologies? Two major utilities—Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) and Southern California Edison—are in the early stages of doing just that

Byline: 

Scott M. Gawlicki

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The Late Great Gas Utility

By abandoning R&D and marketing, the gas industry may have sealed its own fate.

Gas producers and utilities have all but abandoned R&D and marketing. Is it too late to reverse the death spiral, or can the industry learn from other check-off marketing successes?

Byline: 

Richard Kolodziej

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Storm of the Decade

Process changes prepare ComEd to recover quickly from disastrous storm and flood.

Sometimes a bad storm provides the best training ground for a truly terrible storm. An outage in 2006 taught ComEd lessons that helped it recover quickly from the floods of 2007.

Byline: 

Greg Kiraly

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Snake Oil & Smart Meters

Customers deserve the straight truth about electricity costs.

The utility industry faces the difficult task of trying to educate the general public about the realities of delivering electricity service in the 21st century. California’s recent experience trying to put smart thermostats into the state’s building code provides a cautionary example.

Byline: 

Michael T. Burr, Editor-in-Chief

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