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Consumer advocacy groups voice concern
IN SOME CIRCLES, PUSHING SMART METERS MAY END UP BEING DUMB policy. But a wave of public relations is now drowning out the skeptical voices necessary to ensure that the public does not get bamboozled, some consumer advocacy groups say.The essence of this argument is that smart meters capable of reaching inside homes and adjusting energy consumption have yet to bear fruit. And if they are unable...
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AARP discusses value for older consumers
WHEN PEOPLE TALK SMART GRID, ONE TOPIC THAT KEEPS COMING UP IS the consumer-both from the standpoint of engaging consumers and also of using advanced technologies to generate additional value for consumers. There is certainly a lot of promise with smart grid technologies-from effectively integrating renewable generation to better informing customers about their energy use. But these promises come...
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Delaware's smart grid progress
BASED ON ITS MODEST GEOGRAPHY, DELAWARE MIGHT BE DISMISSED BY some in the greater U.S. business equation, but omitting the state in any serious business discussion constitutes a considerable oversight. Delaware actually maintains a rather lofty business profile-and not just because it's home to leading global businesses such as DuPont. The state's inviting business/incorporation legal structure,...
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Pepco discusses Delaware metering deployment
WHEN I SET OFF TO VISIT A UTILITY WITH 1.9 MILLION customers in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., I was surprised to find myself at a Pepco Holdings Inc. (PHI) office in the New Jersey countryside. I not only learned why New Jersey is called the Garden State during that visit, but also gained insight into PHI's Blueprint for the Future initiative-particularly its advanced...
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The Offense - Smart meter + slot machine security
WHEN TOMMY CARMICHAEL-THE WORLD'S GREATEST SLOTmachine cheat-wanted to illegally coax coins out of Las Vegas slot machines, his first step was to get his hands on the machine he wanted to cheat. He was successful at beating the best electronic security that slot machine engineers could design and milked hundreds of thousands of dollars before he got arrested.Coincidentally, Las Vegas was the...
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The defense - Oncor keeps raising the bar on security
ONCOR IS BUILDING INTELLIGENCE ACROSS ITS network-from synchrophasors on its transmission networks to advanced metering on homes and businesses. Mark Carpenter, Oncor's vice president and CIO, noted that the utility's smart grid "is not any one thing, but is essentially spreading intelligent devices throughout the utility system, building a communications network to support these devices,...
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Older + wiser- Aging workers won't leave utilities in the dark
THE UTILITY INDUSTRY IS GETTING OLDER. BY SOME estimates, nearly half of today's workforce will be eligible . for retirement in the next decade. Years of hard-won knowledge / seem doomed to disappear just as utilities are implementing \ smart grid initiatives and benefiting from improved data collection and opportunities for advanced customer communications and energy efficiency. Is this a...
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More than in the door: Industry has to keep them too
RECRUITING IS IMPORTANT, BUT IT IS NOT JUST about getting younger people into jobs. It is critical for the utility industry to keep them in place, too. "We really need to invest in this now. We need to get them in the door, get them trained and then raise the bar technologically," said Kalvin Davies, a director in the operations, people and change group at PricewaterhouseCoopers.ATTRACTING YOUNG...
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New innovation: SDG&E pairs technology + workforce
JIM AVERY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF POWER supply for San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), has a story to tell about smart grid technology and workforce education. This pairing has really taken off at his utility and throughout the area."The story is really about the power industry. More will happen in our industry in the next 10 years than has happened over the past hundred years. Now we...
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SCE Digitally integrates renewables
IN HIS DAYS AS A CONTROL ROOM OPERATOR MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, JOHN Pespisa remembers working intermittent renewable energy resources like wind into the system. The footprint may have been small, but the resource had to be dispatched. "Sometimes at 3 a.m., you'd wonder where the wind went," he said.No longer. With more advanced forecasting tools and improved monitoring of generation sites and...
