Insights from our Editorial Team
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Feb 12, 2013 |
Utilities continue to focus more on the customer these days: What do they want? What do they need? What can be done to establish lines of communication? But, utilities still tend to lump all of their customers together into a single entity, as if they all want and need the same things. Borrowed from years of use in more customer-interactive retail spaces, customer segmentation offers details that the more traditional “one big lump” view of customers cannot.
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Feb 11, 2013 |
Principles and best practices from "Moneyball," as well as other books such as "Competing on Analytics," are well suited for decision makers in unregulated utilities. SDG&E's Lee Krevat, along with Tim Fairchild from SAS, reveal the lessons available to electricity insiders.
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Feb 10, 2013 |
We asked Rebecca Herold for her advice in a couple of privacy arenas, namely what utilities should be planning for in the area of privacy for 2013 and for the long-term. Herold helms the privacy subcommittee within the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel’s cybersecurity working group.
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Feb 07, 2013 |
Before I go to any show, from small association event to large vendor-based exhibit floor, I think about how many I’ve been to. Can I guess the number? Can I guess how long I’ve spent at shows over my career? I recently added to that lifetime total with yet another show. Despite the repetitive nature of these things, however, I always learn at least a few interesting tidbits that are new and shiny and start the gears spinning in my head just a tad faster.
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Feb 06, 2013 |
Perhaps participation in pricing programs isn’t the key to push efficiency. Perhaps the key is creating seamless, unseen adjustments to efficiency that benefit consumers without requiring them to look up from reading, be distracted from work or to quit their angry diatribes on today’s pop music.
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Feb 05, 2013 |
All this money on studies. All this talk about needing to know what a consumer wants. What if what the power consumer really wants is just to be left alone? Are we willing to accept that finding?
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Feb 04, 2013 |
For utilities, this has been a tough lesson: Confidentiality is a part of privacy, but it is not the end of privacy concerns. Privacy also encompasses the use, sharing and safeguarding of customer information, which includes information that can reveal consumer activities and lifestyles.
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Feb 03, 2013 |
The smart grid isn’t a test. It isn’t a review or a project. It isn’t a new technology we can choose to learn (or not learn, as the case may be). As the diet books all also proclaim, it’s a lifestyle change. Or, to quote REM, “it’s the end of the world as we know it.” (But, don’t worry, you’ll feel fine.)
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Jan 31, 2013 |
Recently I had the opportunity to moderate an editorial and analyst panel discussion at an executive briefing hosted by Energy Central. The briefing was held in San Diego and featured Marty Rosenberg, Editor-in-Chief of EnergyBiz magazine; Christine, Research Director at the Utility Analytics Institute; and Kathleen Davis, Editor-in-Chief of Intelligent Utility magazine.
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Jan 30, 2013 |
The definition of nanotechnology is simple: It’s merely technology that manipulates matter at the atomic level. “Nanotech is a platform,” said Dr. Pradeep Haldar, vice president for clean energy programs with the College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering with the University of Albany (UAlbany CNSE). “It’s not single product or process. With the help of nano, we can make technology better and cheaper. We can make electronic devices along the smart grid smarter.”
