It’s not easy to settle in on one topic area out of the wide range of subject matter covered in last week’s Smart Grid Summit held in correlation with TMC’s ITEXPO (News - Alert) East, but because I love history, the choice becomes much easier. One of the most interesting panel discussions focused on the lessons that the telecom companies could teach to electric utilities. The drama and tragedy of history is in how often it repeats itself. What the smart grid will do for the entire electricity supply chain in many ways mirrors the revolutionary and evolutionary forces that changed the telecom supply chain. Will the utility industry learn from that history, or will the lessons they should have learned become a bucket list that is never completed? 

Based on what came out of last week’s Smart Grid Summit, below is an analysis of the four most important things to do on the utility bucket list:

Mission.   Utility resources have strong sense of mission - utilities are obliged to deliver power, although no one thinks about electricity unless it’s not there. For electric utilities, failure is not an option, even if you are woefully ignored. Regulated telcos also considered themselves to be the Rodney Dangerfield of the corporate world, and many telecom resources resisted the changes that were thrust upon them, interpreting these actions as criticisms of past performance. It’s not criticism, and be happy that electricity is now an exciting topic of conversation. 

Bucket List #1: Embrace change, it doesn’t automatically threaten your mission.

Technology Risk Aversion. Telcos and electric utilities have a common fear that keeps them up at night: the fear of new technologies. Given the mission of utilities it would be a career-killer to introduce a new product or application that could bring down the grid. New technology is rigorously tested in internal labs, a duplicative, and for vendors – expensive, process because each utility network is unique. The result is slow pace of innovation.  However, the smart grid pushes the utility grid edge into residences and businesses, and the potential for innovation in this zone is great – as evidenced in the Smart Grid Summit presentations on Game Changing Applications and Home Energy Management Systems. 

Adopting open source and standards-based solutions can foster a vast upwelling of innovative solutions that reside at the network edge without harm to core grid reliability. Utilities need to learn how to certify innovations at the edge of their grids, and create test environments and processes that reduce two to three year emerging technology test cycles into two to three month cycles.  

Bucket List #2: Revise your processes to quickly certify innovations at the grid edge, and you might be able to enjoy some of the revenues from those innovations.

Customer Satisfaction. Competition has a marvelous effect on customer services. For commodity products, indeed, service delivery is the only means of differentiation.   Electron delivery really can’t be distinguished by factors other than its reliability, and perhaps its energy source – clean or dirty – its price and the resources that represent the utility. Utilities, like telcos, can learn to measure customer satisfaction through advisory boards, contact center metrics, and multi-media communication strategies. Today’s captive ratepayer may be tomorrow’s customer with a selection of vendors for electricity transactions as well as value-added services such as Home Energy Management Systems and more. 

Bucket List #3: Learn to delight your ratepayers, or they may not be yours in the future.

Monopolistic Communications. Electric utilities have been regulated monopolies for a very long time, with some recent deregulation exceptions.  Utilities have experience in effective communications with their state utility commissions and federal regulators. Their ability to effectively communicate with customers is a much less practiced skill set. Some utilities get it, but many do not. As utilities confront the challenges of introducing new smart grid technologies and services to their ratepayers, they’ll discover a steep learning curve. (Hello Bakersfield, California!) To ensure success and accelerate the climb up that learning curve, utilities should hire resources skilled in competitive business-to- business and business-to -consumer environments to bring the needed communication skills into their organizations. 

Bucket List #4:  Bring in new resources that can help improve your message development and delivery, and help existing resources develop skills to evangelize and educate consumers.

Christine Hertzog is a consultant, author and professional explainer focused on smart grid technologies and solutions. She is the author of the Smart Grid Dictionary, the first dictionary that explains the jargon, acronyms, and terminology used by utilities, regulators, standards organizations and manufacturers.