Picking up from yesterday, I’m going to focus now on a couple more sessions I really think you’ll find worthwhile at the Smart Grid Summit next week. I’ll start first with the Smart Grid Initiatives panel, which runs on Wednesday at noon. This is where you’ll hear about the state of the nation for smart grid deployments. Getting utilities to speak in public about these projects is harder to do than it looks, but we have a strong panel nonetheless.

 

I’ll be moderating, and joining me will be one utility and two highly experienced energy consultants who can speak first-hand about many smart grid deployments. It’s important to recognize that utilities have been hit or miss so far with smart grid, and our session will strive for a balanced perspective. Our two industry speakers will be Sharon Allan of Accenture and Brendan Herron of the Current Group. I’m actually quite looking forward to their perspectives, and you can expect to learn a lot about what’s working and not working with today’s implementations.

 

Our third speaker will be Sandy Manners of Horizon Utilities. This utility will not be a household name for the audience, as they are Canadian, and serve a relatively small customer base not far from my home in Toronto. Believe it or not, getting Horizon to speak was not by design – I did not set out to find them but things just worked out this way. Small world. That said, I very much wanted to get some Canadian presence on the panel, as our utilities are generally viewed as being well ahead of the United States, especially in terms of using WiMAX (News - Alert) and rolling out TOU – Time Of Use – smart meter programs.

 

Aside from showcasing Canadian smart grid successes, there is another aspect to Sandy’s participation that I think will be of great interest, not just for our attendees, but ITEXPO (News - Alert) East 2010 Expo in general. While Sharon and Brendan can speak at length about the technologies, Sandy will add a non-technical layer that I feel is every bit as important to the success of a smart grid program.

 

Her focus is on the communications issues around educating subscribers about what the program means and how their behaviors will change. Engineers take it for granted that everyone understands these things, and for better or worse, the subscriber is an active participant in the world of smart grid. The utility contact center has a big role to play here, and while this may be an afterthought on the network side, it has a lot to do with making subscribers comfortable with what’s coming. ITEXPO has long had a strong contact center component in their program, and I think this session will speak well to that audience.

 

The second session I would urge you to attend is another one that I’m moderating – What Utilities can Learn from Telcos, running on Thursday at 2 p.m. In my mind, this session speaks the best to the vision we have for the Smart Grid Summit. Both utilities and telcos will learn something here, and we hope this kick-starts an ongoing dialog. We only have 45 minutes, and the time will pass quickly as we have four speakers, all of whom will give you something to think about.

 

You’ll be hearing from three telcos, two of which are household names – Verizon and Sprint Nextel (News - Alert). I think you’ll be surprised to hear just how much focus they have on smart grid, and where they can bring a lot of value to utilities. Remember, telcos have gone through their own modernization process with IP, and in many ways they can help shorten the learning curve for utilities.

 

Our third telco may be even more of a surprise, and that’s the point. PAETEC will be familiar to the ITEXPO crowd, but much less so in the Smart Grid space. The more I learn about PAETEC’s vision for Smart Grid and the energy business in general, the more I see them as a model for what carriers can become in a post-telecom world. Don’t miss this.

 

Rounding out the panel will be Hughes (News - Alert) Systique, who have extensive engineering and R&D expertise for both fixed and wireless operators, and can speak to broader trends about where carriers can bring smart innovation to utilities.

 

If you’re still looking for reasons to attend the Summit, come back Monday, as I’ll have Part 3 for this preview series ready then. We have panels and keynotes running all three days, and we won’t be hard to find – everything happens in the same place – Room B117. See you there.