Dave Springe is a bit of a contrarian. If everyone is saying, "Let's get a Cadillac," he might say, "Do you know what that costs?"

That is exactly what he is doing about the smart grid. I met David for coffee this week to followup on his provocative presentation at the EnergyBiz Leadership Forum. Springe is the top consumer representative in utility matters in Kansas and is currently president of the national body of his peers, the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates.

No one is against smarts, Springe told me. The grid control rooms he has visited are hardly shrines to the technology of yesteryear. They are as modern as a rocket launch command center, nuclear power plant control room or national telecommunications network operations center. Highly computerized. Intelligent operators. A well oiled machine.

So Springe says he is in search of smart grid gurus to explain exactly what more is needed. In fact, after our meeting, he was headed to a major engineering firm with oodles of grid expertise to work on his learning curve.

The federal stimulus package has earmarked $11 billion - with a b - to update the grid. Define the grid? The Economist recently took a stab at it. 3,000 utilities, 500 transmission owners and 164,000 miles of high-voltage lines. If wind is to generate 20 percent of our power by 2030 - something the feds say is doable - $60 billion must be spent on transmission, The Economist reports. Another neat tidbit - more effort is required to get approval of a transmission line than actually construct it, as AEP has learned. One AEP line took 14 years to secure needed approvals and just 2 years to build, The Economist said.

One last fact, from the eminent British journal. Upwards of 300,000 megawatts of wind power projects have been proposed, a bride at the altar of our future enegy economy. What is needed is a groom - in the form of a lanky national, modern grid.

So, where does that leave Springe? His gaze is now on Kansas geography. He knows his Sunflower state, referring to distant outposts with fond nicknames - like Hutch for Hutchinson. He has a simple question, asked on behalf of the Kansans he knows and represents. If two big transmission developers are eager to plant needed transmission lines in Kansas, why have the powers that be - state regulators and their staffers - told them to team up and hammer out a plan? What is wrong with a little dose of good old competition? Perhaps, then, the lines might be built for less and we can move faster toward developing those 300,000 megawatts, maybe then we can stretch that $11 billion of stimulus a bit further down the line.

 Any regulators in Topeka care to respond to that question posed by Mr. Springe?