Phew! The last few weeks have truly been a smart grid road trip for me.  I spent the last week in Washington, D.C. covering SAP for Utilities and GridWeek. Similar themes came out through the conferences, so I am summarizing them both in this blog. I will cover a few key themes from the conferences and then dive into the first-ever Top 9 Smart Grid Analogies list.

As one utility representative pointed out at the SAP for Utilities conference: “If you build it, they won’t come” and “If you build it, they will complain about it.”  Essentially, utilities can’t forget about people and change management when upgrading or installing new technologies. I have talked about the people aspect for awhile now, but for the first time I really began to hear much more from other people about the people aspect of the smart grid.

And the importance of people was only further reinforced by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s announcement at GridWeek for additional funding to help develop the workforce needs for a smart grid.

International influence. 

One of my favorite parts of the conferences, particularly GridWeek, was just the international flavor. We heard from the President of the State Grid Corporation of China as well as representatives from Korea, Italy, Brazil and Australia, all of which seem to be plowing ahead with smart grid efforts. Of course, as one GridWeek attendee noted, the more democratically oriented a society—and the more voices in the mix—the longer it will take to move with smart grid efforts, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.   

Funding and business drivers. 

As I noted in an earlier blog this week, the federal government is really pushing the smart grid efforts forward. In his closing address at GridWeek, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said that “We will make the smart grid a reality in America.”

But what about pushing forward the smart grid through business benefits and ROI? Probably one of the most telling moments was when I was chatting with a financials person from a large utility company. He said his job was to help the business make money, but he still couldn’t figure out smart grid. I then noted that GridWeek was pretty crowded. He got this very solemn, distant look on his face and noted that if the ARRA weren’t around, this conference would be smaller, if no carbon legislation was on the horizon it would be smaller still, and if no state public policy groups were demanding it, then we would probably not be having this conference at all. 

At the same time, you do see business benefits working for some utilities. Beyond just meter reader savings, one consultant talked about how smart grid not only enables more consumer interaction, but can benefit utilities by making consumers essentially a more efficient cost point—from better understanding billing preferences to better addressing customer problems to better marketing program for customers.

One of the most interesting things I picked from these conferences was an analogy overload. I am not sure why I noticed so many more analogies here than at other conferences. Perhaps a special anniversary DVD of Forrest Gump just hit the stores and people were feeling inspired.  Despite the humorous nature of the analogies below, I think they really help demonstrate that there are other systems like a smarter grid that work now, therefore, what people are looking in the utility industry may not be so crazy after all. Here are the Top 9 Smart Grid Analogies.

Best transportation analogy: Trains take you from point A to point B on the same line from one major hub to another, which is kind of like how our centralized generation model operates today. The grid of the future will operate more like the interstate and road system where you have flexibility in paths and how you get from point A to point B (hey, you can even go off the road if needed).

Best FedEx endorsement analogy: Utilities will be the FedEx of kilowatt hours.

Best shopping analogy: The gas price sign analogy is the most obvious.  But one person related not knowing your electricity consumption to how absurd it would be if we did the same thing when grocery shopping.  Think about going to the grocery store, getting a bunch of stuff, not knowing the price of any of it and then having the store send you a bill 40 days later.  (While this analogy was being explained to me, I keep trying to remember the name of a shopping game where you ran through a fake grocery store with no prices on the items and people tried to get the highest total grocery bill. I loved that show.) Speaking of game shows and grocery store prices, perhaps they should have a Price is Right spinoff for electricity costs (e.g., guessing how much devices and appliances cost to run).  Perhaps that would get people interested in electricity prices.

Best food analogy: I liked how one consultant related knowing your energy consumption to knowing the amount of calories in restaurant food. By providing caloric information, you aren’t telling consumers that they can’t have that Cinnabon that just always looks so tempting, you are just making them more aware of what is in it and therefore enabling them to make more informed decisions.  

Best combination of analogies: Utilities will become an Ebay/UPS hybrid with distributed generation and decentralized networks. It will be like Ebay because utilities will turn into a marketplace for selling energy (and earn money from fees for transactions) and UPS because utilities will then deliver the energy (and earn money through delivery fees). Hopefully, utilities won’t be entirely like UPS and hide your energy under the doormat, so you don’t find it for three weeks.

Best internet analogy: None. This analogy was probably used about 1,583 times at both conferences. It got a little bit boring after the 937^th time.

Best botanical analogy: Standards development for a smart grid is like the timing for planting grass and building sidewalks around new buildings. Standards are like grass seed and they are the foundation for a landscape. But don’t try to lay out the sidewalks (e.g., technology) through the grass before you know where people will go because you can’t fully understand the paths they will take. So, you have to have flexibility in standards because you are never sure where technology will take you next. Although it did make sense at the time, it is slightly confusing now. Try reading it after you have had a glass of wine and it will probably be a life-changing revelation.

Best unintentional analogy: The microphone system went down during one of the opening sessions at GridWeek, but people realized that we could hear the presenters through the translation headphones we had from an earlier presenter.  It was a reminder that technology—whether digital or not—will not always work, so it is good to have a backup plan. The main speaker system was like centralized generation and the translation headphones were like distributed generation that keep us going when the main system went down. So when the main speakers went down, we could still keep going on a more localized level. See, I can come up with analogies, too.

Most deliberate attempt at a funny analogy that actually worked, but you probably had to be there to get the funniness of it analogy: This analogy was about the collaboration needed for a smart grid. GridWeek had a person who went around interviewing people at the conference and then they would show some of the interview highlights the following day. I normally don’t laugh at people who try to hard too be zany (it is one of my stern humor principles), but there was one clip by the zany interviewer that had the audience—and amazingly me—rolling. I guarantee it is a “had to be there” moment, but I will try my best. Someone he interviewed said we need to collaborate and listen, which made him bring up Ice Ice Baby and “stop, collaborate and listen” (Vanilla Ice = automatically humorous). The interviewer then somehow made this amazing transition from “cooking bacon” (which is mentioned in the song) to drinking coffee. He then compared making a cup of coffee to creating a smart grid. He grabbed a woman from IBM and made her hold a coffee cup, which represented the grid, and then for the collaboration part he poured in the coffee, someone else added cream, another person added the sugar and then someone else stirred it all up (of course, everyone doing this looked highly embarrassed). Then interviewer made the IBMer drink it. And it turned out to be outstanding, one smart cup of coffee made by the collaboration of many different people. Hopefully, he said, the same can thing will happen for the smart grid. After reading through this analogy again, I can sense the collective groan from everyone reading this analogy. My apologies. 

Thanks for reading!

H.

H. Christine Richards is editor-in-chief of Intelligent Utility clicking here. Or start your complimentary subscription to Intelligent Utilitywww.intelligentutility.com/subscribe. magazine. Go to magazine. You can view the latest issue online by