Technology opens customers’ homes to utility services.
Advanced metering infrastructure and intelligent appliances are opening the door to a new market for utility services. But in-home services are a completely different ball game. Going beyond the meter will require utilities to transform the way they engage and serve customers.
Gaz Métro buys Central Vermont Public Service; Tortoise Capital Resources acquires interest in Public Service of New Mexico; South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper sell capacity, and more.
‘We can’t have it both ways: costly mandates without full consumer understanding and support.’
Does slow and steady still win the race?
When a capital-intensive industry enters an asset-building cycle, many companies will operate in the red for a few years or more. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as cap-ex investments represent growth for shareholders. The devil is in the details, however, and companies facing a large slug of environmental compliance investments might produce disappointing returns over the next few years.
In general, demand response refers to the ability of consumers to respond to a supply shortage by curtailing demand, thereby improving economic efficiency. Since the California energy crisis, demand response has been widely used in electricity markets throughout the United States and Canada.1 Recent developments in the natural gas sector suggest that the time may have come to also introduce demand response in that sector.
A century or so ago, Thomas Edison’s commercialization of electricity unleashed an unprecedented cascade of change, altering the way humanity worked, lived and interacted. Today, with the convergent rise of the smart grid, renewable energy and electric vehicles (EVs), the power sector is embarking on a second era of transformation that promises to deliver a smarter, greener and more efficient 21st century.
(August 2011) Shaw Group completes 500 MW combined cycle plant; Pattern Energy begins building Spring Valley wind farm; AEP, Duke and TVA team up on interstate transmission line; AEP and MidAmerican contract for Texas transmission projects; Alliant contracts Open Systems International for volt-VAR control system; Alstom buys into AWS Ocean Energy; Siemens acquires shares in PV manufacturer Semprius; Lockheed Martin introduces cyber security system; plus contracts and announcements involving Elster, Itron, Suzlon, Solon, Sensus, Westinghouse Electric, Morgan Lewis and others.
Protecting the smart grid requires a broader strategy.
NERC’s critical infrastructure protection (CIP) standards set a minimum level of security performance—and only for high-voltage transmission systems, not the distribution grid. A compliance-checklist approach to security might lack the adaptability needed to combat evolving threats like the Stuxnet worm. A multi-layered, risk-based approach will provide better protection for the emerging smart grid.
Public-private collaboration to protect our infrastructure.
Smart grid technologies bring a host of cyber security considerations that need to be addressed throughout the transmission and distribution domain—and even into the customer’s home. In the second of two exclusive articles, Department of Energy authors team up with industry experts to provide a path forward for securing the smart grid.