‘Tis the season for 2012 predictions, when experts in different fields sum up everything they’ve learned over the past year and take a stab at how they see those trends playing out over next year.

According to this annual tradition, then, online industry journal Renew Grid offers up IDC (News - Alert) Energy Insights’s forecast for 2012.

Looking at the sector overall, “several key smart grid areas will experience growth,” IDC officials say, in such fields as smart meters, distribution automation, plug-in electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries. This makes it rather a bright spot for utilities, some of which are not expecting robust growth.

So, to the crystal ball:

If you were hoping for massive federal government spending to flood the market, you’ll probably be out of luck. "The majority of these projects will be self-funded barring any unprecedented federal government [funds], which we don't foresee for the next several years," says Marcus Torchia, research manager at IDC.

So if you were counting on handouts from Uncle Sam, sorry. Where government will probably help you is in the energy efficiency goals or standards many states have, which mean smart building technology investments.

And this might finally be the year we see electric cars taking off, including the much-maligned Chevy Volt. In fact, IDC’s so optimistic they’re already calling 2012 "the true year of the electric vehicle." How good will it be? IDC predicts that 120,000 PEVs will be sold in North America in 2012. Those are numbers the industry would kill for.

Riding on that trend, IDC says, automotive lithium-ion batteries will be on the market for around $600/kWh. The race is over, evidently -- "Lithium ion has won the storage race," says Sam Jaffe, research manager at IDC. "It's proven, and it's capable to do what is needed."

And a bit less speculatively, IDC sees cybersecurity threats continuing to grow, benefiting industrial control system vendors.