Insights from our Editorial Team

Election changes might await us this early morning, and they'll already be old news by the time you read this column. And then we will watch ... but I doubt we will wait. This "smart grid" snowball has gathered too much momentum, I think, to be halted by mid-term elections and political machinations. No matter how far the pendulum may swing, to the left or to the right, history has clearly shown that it won't really make that much difference, in the long run.

The North American market for smart grid is diverse and nuanced and the deliberate pursuit of a sustainable business is the healthiest course, according to Philip Mezey, chief operating officer for Itron North America.  Utilities and vendors should work toward open standards and reduce total cost of ownership for innovations that will aid efficiency and reliability, Mezey said in an interview.

Some of my readers have bemoaned my occasional injection of raw politics into discussions of grid modernization. But with the mid-term elections tomorrow, it's never been clearer that politics, policy and utility strategies are intertwined. Here are the results of readers polls we've taken on politically related smart grid issues. 

Accenture's Sharon Allan tells Intelligent Utility Daily that thinking through every smart grid effort to an end state that may be years away is critical to designing systems that will yield their full business value. That's not easy in an environment swept by change, she acknowledged. But translating that vision into a detailed roadmap and grasping its impacts on business processes can aid in aligning people and processes, for a more effective utility.