November 9th, 2009
Courtesy of The Energy Collective, an interesting article on the position of consumers in the smart grid / smart meters roll out. We are in agreement with the author’s view on smart meters and their relative lack of utility (dare we say…), but we disagree with his overall somewhat pessimistic view on the primacy of […]
Read more »Industry’s Error In Positioning Smart Meters
November 4th, 2009
Via Tyler Hamilton’s Clean Break blog, some insightful comments on industry’s “marketing” of smart meters and how utilities may have erred in positioning meters as consumer friendly nodes of action instead of important – but decidely unsexy – infrastructure investments. As we have discussed here, smart meters and smart grids without smart markets are a […]
Read more »October 25th, 2009
As adroitly noted by The Energy Collective, Forbes has an article on smart meters, reporting that utilities – not consumers – are benefiting from these initiatives. As the article notes: “…Power companies across the U.S. have installed millions of home smart meters, devices that promise to intelligently cut power use, trim electric bills and ultimately […]
Read more »Smart Grids: Will They Enable Smart Customers and Smart Markets Like iPhone Applications Did For Wireless Telephony?
October 16th, 2009
Courtesy of Earth2Tech, an interesting comparison between the telecommunications industry and utilities as they consider adding value-added services on top of the power network (like phone companies have rushed to do on their data networks) or if remaining content to provide the basic energy pipes. As part of our advocacy of smart markets and smart […]
Read more »October 14th, 2009
Courtesy of Smart Grid News, an interesting article on whether smart grids need smart consumers, and – specifically – whether smart customers will need end-use pricing (they will). As FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller recently explained “…the “majority of the benefits of the Smart Grid [will be] at the retail level, when consumers have dynamic pricing.” […]
Read more »Wiser Wires Will Prevail… Now How To Get Wiser Heads Involved?
October 9th, 2009
Courtesy of The Economist, an interesting analysis of the global movement to introduce smart grids. As the report notes, there is a substantial consumer element still to resolve: “…whereas cars, computers and so forth have become ever more sophisticated, power grids have remained, in essence, sets of dumb wires. Thomas Edison, a pioneer of electrification […]
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