-
Missouri's smart grid progress
IT'S REALLY NO REVELATION THAT SUSTAINABLE EFFORTS IN SMART GRID today are either ongoing or being planned and implemented. The initiatives are happening not only in globally prominent geographies, but also in some regions where they're astonishingly less advertised.Like every worthwhile pursuit, however, it doesn't matter whether implementation is high profile or low key. Some of the lesser-...
-
SMART SOLUTIONS MUST TAKE INTO ACCOUNT REGIONAL DIFFERENCES
AMERICA'S ELECTRIC INFRASTRUCTURE-OLD AND WILDLY OUTDATED-IS overstressed. Several critical market needs are driving new requirements in an industry that has seen little change since the Great Depression.Customization is the way things are going around the world, so why would anyone think a one-size-fits-all solution for a smarter grid would work in the United States? Each region of the country...
-
WITH ALL THE EMPHASIS BEING PUT ON SMART GRID technology-including large investments to upgrade our nation's antiquated energy distribution system-it's likely that a robust and intelligent energy network will emerge in the future.But wait. That smart grid might not be as smart if utilities overlook key networking and infrastructure issues, such as moving from a centralized network architecture to...
-
AN INTELLIGENT UTILITY REQUIRES MEASURING VALUE
AN THE UTILITY INDUSTRY EMBARKS ON THE JOURNEY toward a smart grid/intelligent utility, it will be well served to remember the old saying: ''If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten.'' New outputs, we all know, require new inputs. The transformation to an intelligent utility will not be made by repeating the management practices, measures and strategic...
-
SNOPUD'S TAKE ON SMART ARCHITECTURE
SNOHOMISH COUNTY PUBLIC UTILITY DISTRICT (SNOPUD), based in Everett, Wash., is the largest of the 28 public utility districts in the state and the second-largest publicly owned utility in the Pacific Northwest. Steve Klein, general manager of SNOPUD, is leading his utility toward smart grid capabilities one careful step at a time.''Like many utilities today, we have one foot in the past and one...
-
HOW UTILITIES CAN GET MORE OUT OF ERP TODAY + TOMORROW
IN THIS ARTICLE, I WILL SHARE WITH YOU MY perspectives on what leading utilities are doing to get more value from their enterprise resource planning (ERP) investments by using these systems as foundational pieces for their smart grid and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) deployments.Architecting today's intelligent utility and integrating the different aspects of a smart grid-including your...
-
SOME OF US WHO WERE IN THE MILITARY IN THE 1970S and who had access to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the world's first operational packet switching network and the predecessor of the Internet, were stunned by its capabilities. I can't say we envisioned what the Internet would become, but it was easy to see the potential of such an information system at your fingertips....
-
KC P&L DRAW IN THE WEB
THE TERM ''MASHUPS'' HAS JOINED THE LEXICON OF Web 2.0 applications where Web-sourced information, such as maps, weather and other data, is aggregated on a Web site to be shared among a group. Being able to quickly and inexpensively assemble customized views of data drawn from multiple Web sources on a Web site holds great promise, but true mashups have just begun to arrive for utilities.What is...
-
TECHNOLOGY MEANS GIVE+TAKE
AT AGE 70, BLUEBONNET COULD CHOOSE TO SETTLE in as a stodgy, creaky electric cooperative intent on clinging to its heydays of the past. Not quite.Indeed, the deft decision-makers at the Bastrop, Texas coop are arguably ahead of the utility pack in pursuit of their version of the smart grid. CEO Mark Rose elaborates on his unique vision for the progressive coop in a compact and eloquent document...
-
INFORMATION HAS BECOME ONE OF THE MOST VALUABLE commodities as emerging technologies help individuals manage data with ease and reliability. For utilities, the smart grid is creating opportunities to learn more about customer behavior and energy usage. While adopting these capabilities, insightful utilities are strategizing about their use of data to communicate with customers and industry...
