Understanding and Connecting Smart Meters, Smart Grids, and Smart Markets.
- Lynne Kiesling
December 29th, 2009
Courtesy of Earth2Tech, a forecast from Pike Research that the smart grid market will bring in $200 billion in worldwide investment between 2008 and 2015. Out of that total investment, annual smart grid global revenues will grow to $35 billion in 2013 from about $10 billion in 2009. As the article notes:
“…Pike Research says that smart meters will play a pretty small percentage of that total investment while smarter grid infrastructure — including transmission upgrades, substation automation, and distribution automation — will generate the majority of those funds. Grid automation will generate 84 percent of the global investment, smart meters 14 percent, and electric vehicle management systems only 2 percent. In other words, despite the focus on smart meters by many governments, deeper in the grid (away from consumers) is where the real investment will happen.
Another thing interesting to remember about these figures is that total smart grid funding will actually peak in 2013, largely because these are infrastructure investments. Utilities only need to make these once every several decades. For entrepreneurs and investors, that means another thing entirely: There’s a very specific window opening up through which companies need to act fast to capitalize on.”
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Based on decades of experience and interest in conservation, Monty Simus believes that a truly “smart” grid must be a “transactive” grid, unshackled from its current status as a so-called “natural monopoly.”
In short, an unlocked grid must adopt and harness the power of markets to incentivize individual users, linked to each other on a large scale, who change consumptive behavior in creative ways that drive efficiency and bring equity to use of the planet's finite and increasingly scarce resources.