Welcome to the week in review for the smart grid market. Below are some of the top stories that came across the TMCnet news wires this week.

 

On Monday, TMCnet special guest, Christine Hertzog, consultant, author and smart grid technology expert, discussed her reactions to the Smart Grid Summit, held in correlation with ITEXPO (News - Alert) East in Miami.

 

“One of the most interesting panel discussions focused on the lessons that the telecom companies could teach to electric utilities,” Hertzog said. 

 

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, Hertzog summarized the four most important things to do on the utility bucket list.

 

Also on Monday, Shidan Gouran, co-founder of Intelligent Communications Partners (News - Alert), who listed an interesting set of links that he stumbled on last weekend that are definitely worth a click through.

 

The first is a report from an organization known as the Institute for Local Self Reliance that can be found here. In this paper, they claim that the arguments for new inter-state transmission lines as a necessary enabler for mainstream renewable energy sources are unfounded. In fact, the paper claims that over 60 percent of electric demand could be met by in-state renewable sources and that for most states, a quarter of their electricity needs could be generated by residential solar cells.

 

The second is a report from an organization known as the American Wind Energy Association which can be found here. They claim that it is absolutely essential to build new inter-state transmission lines or “Green Super Highways” as an enabler of renewable energy sources, namely wind. Less figures and more marketing than the first link, but worth a read.

 

And on Tuesday, Jon Arnold (News - Alert), co-founder of Intelligent Communications Partners, discussed privacy and the smart grid.

 

“One of the speakers I enjoyed hearing at the Smart Grid Summit was Catherine Thompson, who spoke on the Privacy and Security session,” Arnold said. “Catherine is the Regulatory and Policy Advisor at the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner’s Office. We all know there are many privacy issues associated with smart grid, but we don’t often get to hear from someone with such a strong focus in this area.”

 

Aside from hearing her insights on privacy, Catherine has kindly offered to share a paper that her office recently produced specifically about smart grid issues. The paper is titled “SmartPrivacy for the Smart Grid: Embedding Privacy into the Design of Electricity Conservation,” and can be downloaded from our portal. Since most of you have not seen the paper yet, I’d like to summarize the key ideas here, and would encourage you to read it in full, and then see how these principles can be applied to your smart grid initiatives.

 

That’s the top smart grid news for this week. Check back next week on TMCnet for more breaking news in the smart grid space.