Will the 2014 Smart Grid Triple Crown Go To New York State?
California Chrome is training in New York’s Belmont Park in his pursuit of horse racing’s Triple Crown. If there was a Triple Crown for the Smart Grid, the state of New York could be the 2014 winner....
View ArticleSmart Grid and Smart Buildings Share Same Disruptive Impacts
The annual IBcon event always delivers on thought-provoking discussions and fresh insights about the intersections of technologies, policies, and financial drivers in the commercial real estate sector....
View ArticleNo More Tinkering – How Reinventing the Oven is Like Reinventing the Grid
How do you build a better oven? That’s a question Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO for Microsoft and foodie recently discussed. He pointed out that today’s electric or natural gas-powered oven is designed...
View ArticleHow One Industry Association Would Transform the Grid
Back in January 2014 when we were still packing up holiday decorations, the Obama administration initiated a Quadrennial Energy Review (QER), a comprehensive survey of energy production,...
View ArticleBuilding Infrastructure Resiliency Starts With Creative Problem-Solving
We have significant infrastructure problems in the USA. Long neglect of investment in infrastructure has left it crumbling around us. It is sometimes easy to witness in rusting bridges or potholed road...
View ArticleCould California Become a Leader in Smart Water Management?
California, the Golden State, can legitimately claim a number of superlatives. It’s the ninth largest economy in the world. It has the largest living tree in Sequoia National Park. It has the highest...
View ArticleWhat the Green Revolution in Electronics Means for the Smart Grid
One of the oft-flogged analogies about the Smart Grid is that building it is like assembling a plane in flight. The challenges start with trying to overlay new technologies on top of older...
View ArticleWill US Utilities Offer an Electricity Triple Play?
Recent reports released by UBS, the largest private bank in the world and Citi Research, a division of Citigroup offer compelling investment guidance based on Smart Grid innovation trends that have...
View ArticleHow Smart Grid Policies Create Employment Opportunities
Most Smart Grid discussions about human impacts address the demographic trends in utility workforces or the influences that Smart Grid technologies and applications have on people in residential and...
View ArticleWant Green Power? Try Community Choice Aggregation
The recent Business of Local Energy Symposium in Petaluma, California had a rare degree of fervor that isn’t typically experienced at Smart Grid industry conferences about electricity. Community...
View ArticleThree Global Utility Metatrends
European Utility Week serves as an excellent venue to obtain more global industry perspectives than what is typically found in most North American-based industry events. In the case of the 2014 event,...
View ArticleTalking Points for Thanksgiving Dinner
We all have one – a family member or friend who faithfully regurgitates the weird combination of fiction and paranoia dispensed by the US-based news channel that is anything but “fair and balanced”....
View ArticleDisruptive Innovations Struggle with Broken Systems
A colleague working for a startup with an innovative solution for the US public safety sector recently gave me a status update on the sector, and dwelled on the difficulties for his company to find an...
View ArticleThree Important Takeaways for Success in the Smart Grid Ecosystem
The market opportunities are quite promising. The USA’s electricity ecosystem is transforming as new Smart Grid technologies, regulatory policies, and capitalization mechanisms disrupt the status quo....
View ArticleThe Age of the Prosumer
Do you remember when caveat emptor (buyer beware) was the predominant business attitude about customers? Over time, we’ve witnessed the evolution to what has been declared the Age of the Customer*....
View ArticleWhat is Prosumer Value to Utilities?
The Age of the Prosumer presents challenges for utilities accustomed to thinking of their customers in terms of kilowatthours consumed. The Smart Grid is responsible for these challenges, borne out of...
View ArticleHow Utilities Can Build Expertise with the Five Vs of Data
There’s been a significant amount of hype about the Smart Grid’s four Vs of data – volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. But there’s a missing element to these discussions, and that’s the fifth V –...
View ArticleEnergy Efficiency 2.0 – A New Definition Underway in California
What does energy efficiency mean to you? Does it mean replacing old light bulbs with energy-stingy LEDs? Is it a remodeling project that installs double or triple pane windows? Does it include...
View ArticleHow Nanotechnologies will Disrupt the Electrical Grid
Is it just me, or is the pace of technology innovation speeding up for you too? Acceleration is certainly evident in nanotechnology R&D. Back in December 2014 I wrote two blogs that updated my 2020...
View ArticleA New Equation for a Smart Energy Campus
We’re featuring guest authors over the next few weeks. This article by Robert D. Cormia, a member of the Foothill College Engineering Faculty, talks about a new equation for energy intelligence –...
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