The electric vehicle first made its appearance about a century ago, but it is only in recent years - months, to be more precise - that it has achieved breakthrough status as, quite possibly, the single-most important technological development having a positive impact on society today. Climate change, over-dependence on fossil fuels, and the current economic crisis have combined … [Read more...]
Meeting Future Utility Operating Challenges With a Smart Grid
The classical school of utility operations prescribes four priorities, ranked in the following descending order: safety, reliability, customer service and profit. Although it's not hard to engage any number of industry insiders in an argument over whether profit in the classical model has recently switched places with customer service (and/or whether it should), most people … [Read more...]
Plugging in the Consumer
Thanks to new technologies and the spirit of independence and empowerment fostered by the digital age, consumers are taking on broader and more active roles in an increasing number of industries. Not only are consumers increasingly vocal and decisive about what they will or will not buy, they are in many cases becoming designers, producers, marketers and distributors of the … [Read more...]
Achieving Decentralized Coordination In the Electric Power Industry
For the past century, the dominant business and regulatory paradigms in the electric power industry have been centralized economic and physical control. The ideas presented here and in my forthcoming book, Deregulation, Innovation, and Market Liberalization: Electricity Restructuring in a Constantly Evolving Environment (Routledge, 2008), comprise a different paradigm - … [Read more...]
The GridWise Olympic Peninsula Project
The Olympic Peninsula Project consisted of a field demonstration and test of advanced price signal-based control of distributed energy resources (DERs). Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and led by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the project was part of the Pacific Northwest Grid- Wise Testbed Demonstration. Other participating organizations included … [Read more...]
Ontario Pilot
Smart metering technologies are making it possible to provide residential utility customers with the sophisticated "smart pricing" options once available only to larger commercial and industrial customers. When integrated with appropriate data manipulation and billing systems, smart metering systems can enable a number of innovative pricing and service regimes that shift or … [Read more...]
Business Intelligence: The ‘Better Light Bulb’ for Improved Decision Making
Although some utilities have improved organizational agility by providing high-level executives with real-time visibility into operations, if they're to be truly effective, these businesses must do more than simply implement CEO-level dashboards. They must provide this kind of visibility to every employee who needs it. To achieve this, utilities need to be able to collect data … [Read more...]