Smart Grid is generating a lot of buzz these days as a clean means to stimulating flagging economies in North America and beyond. Behind the buzz is a good deal of solid dialogue in the research community that aims at better understanding of the Smart Grid phenomenon and at identification of new opportunities in this burgeoning market. One example of this new engagement is the
Smart Grid portal, a site that was launched recently by Intelligent Communications Partners (ICP), Jon Arnold and Shidan Gouran, as part of the TMC network.
The ICP approach to Smart Grid has a slightly different focus than the more traditional utilities-based view. As telecom analyst, Arnold and Gouran, a network engineer who now leads a startup (Home Jinni) devoted to smart appliances, envision it, the portal will act not only as a vehicle for understanding how telecom-based solutions can make the grid smarter, but also as way of keeping abreast of developments in ‘smart home’ arena. These and other topics were the subject of discussion at the well attended
Smart Grid Summit, presented by ICP in combination with TMC in Los Angeles this past September. For Arnold, attendance at the Summit demonstrated the high level of interest in this space and validated the group’s plans to build on this momentum with a second
Smart Grid Summit in Miami this coming January. In the meantime, Arnold agreed to speak with IT in Canada about some of the highlights of the September Summit and about some of the trends and opportunities he sees emerging from Smart Grid. Excerpts of this conversation follow.
IT in Canada: The Smart Grid Summit appears to have been a big success. What were the highlights from your perspective and what were the most important subject areas? What is the current “hot” topic and what are some of the innovations that you look forward to seeing more of in the next year?
Arnold: We are coming to Smart Grid from an IT and telecom point of view rather than a utilities point of view because a lot of what Smart Grid is about revolves around communications technologies. Currently, most investment is targeted at upgrading the infrastructure of the grid itself – the plumbing – as was the case in the telecom industry which started to upgrade ten years ago to accommodate IP communications technologies. There are, in fact, a lot of parallels between the situation that the telecoms faced and the utilities' current challenge: telecoms used to be just as regulated as the utilities are now before they went through a process of privatization and deregulation.
Smart Grid is very much about upgrading the infrastructure, but it is also about enabling communication with the users of energy services, whether it is in the home or in commercial or industrial applications. That’s where for us the Smart Grid space gets a little more interesting. The idea of having two-way, real-time communication is valuable because it helps the utility become more efficient, but also because it presents new ways to engage with consumers: through better understanding of how energy is used and managed, opportunities to create new services and new ways of using energy will appear, particularly in the smart home arena where the consumer is all of a sudden becomes an active player.
This development is very similar to what happened in telecom. In the days of rotary phones, the telcos had complete control and consumers didn’t have much to do with it other than pay the bill. Today, our expectations and our involvement are much greater. As consumers, we have a lot more input into the price we pay, the services we use and the choices that are available to us. While the price may have dropped for traditional telco services, these companies have had a huge number of new opportunities opened up for them. We believe that the same thing will happen with the utilities market. Once the subscriber is in the picture, it will drive demand for new types of services and new ways of communicating. These in turn will help the utilities to invent new forms of value, and to become more innovative.
