By Mike Smith, MSPA and Deparment of Commerce Advisor

What we get at Gridweek is a progress report on the exigencies between government stimulus grants, tax credits, and regulatory intervention and private industry, capital markets, and consumer demand. It seems to me the baton has not been fully passed from one to the next.

“What my boss, Aneesh Chopra, envisions is a ‘Green Button’ so you can see what you are getting from your service provider.” Nick Sinai presaged what may be the closing keynote on Thurs., Sept. 15 at Gridweek.  Sinai, is a Harvard Graduate, former VC, Energy and Environment Director at the FCC with a focus on smart grid technology, and now senior advisor to the CTO at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicksinai

Sinai joined a panel of industry leaders as a White House official at Gridweek this week to talk about the Enlightened buildings of the future. He said: “Consumers deserve information about this usage and price (of energy) in a machine-readable format. Thousands of utilities also need to be sharing their best practices.”

Gridweek was really the brainchild of DOE Director of the Smart Grid Task Force Eric Lightner. *http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Lightner_Eric_55451035.aspx

He was among the first to bring private industry and public officials together to the table almost five years ago to begin a dialogue. Smart Grid conferences have proliferated with GridWise in Nov. seeking to continue a policy debate with the Hill. The DOE itself recently sponsored a summit on cyber security that included how to protect the grid.

Former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge will speak at a Natural Gas Demand Summit Oct. 26 in Houston to further discuss national security, domestic production and electricity distribution. http://www.paceglobal.com/RiskManagementEnergyConsulting.aspx

At Gridweek, Rick Feddrizi of the US Green Building Council said what we should be talking about is “how to hit your margins” on smart grid profitability. “While others are asking for rebates to kick start their programs with incentives.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Green_Building_Council

Sinai said on the same panel, “What ultimately got the Grid out of the lab was retail competition. It’s very powerful. You have a publicly regulated utility, yes, but it also is a private enterprise. Competition is what forces innovation.”

As a Venture Capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners, where Sinai made his money, he watched developments in a broadband digital world. “Utility companies can be linked to cell phones, through broadband services, to help with home security or consumer power usage.”

“New technologies like the I-phone can be very interesting to help increase consumer protection or service delivery – for instance, companies can ensure an outage is localized.”

He predicted within the next 10-15 years, higher end homes will be smart grid-enabled and digitally connected. “But you have to be able to deploy the smart grid universally.”

“The consumer has to be front and center,” he said.

Silver Spring Networks Vice President of Strategic Development Paul Nagel demurred. “Every device cannot be linked to your home through your I-phone. But you will be able to stream information off the cloud,” he said. “The customer should be able to pick what sort of collective data gathering makes the most sense.”