Smart Grid Library

The NARUC (National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners) Summer Committee Meetings last week revealed a few sobering projections about our future electrical supply.  First, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) anticipates that the cost of electricity will increase by 50% by 2030 even with use of all possible energy sources from fossil fuels to renewables.  [...]

“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”  Charles F. Kettering, American inventor of the electrical ignition system and early distributed generation devices, made this observation.  As an inventor, he had ample experience as a change agent in trying to explain new ideas and technologies to skeptical potential customers [...]

Energy efficiency is “the first fuel to set priorities about design, deployment, and use of any devices or materials that consume electricity or contribute to its consumption.” (Definition from the Smart Grid Dictionary, 2nd Edition). It is also called “low-hanging fruit” to describe that it is the easiest and cheapest way to avoid the purchase [...]

My mother is writing a book.  She learned how to use a computer, and has been diligently crafting her story chapter by chapter.  If only the local electric grid would cooperate.  A single power disruption of a few seconds wiped out an entire chapter of her book.  Now she is reworking a previous version and [...]

This past week was filled with Smart Grid-related conferences, starting with an Electric Vehicles Consumer Adoption Summit organized by IQPC in San Francisco and ending with the Silicon Valley Energy Summit co-sponsored by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University.  These two conferences highlighted the critical needs to build [...]

History is full of teachable moments to inspire us.  I was intrigued by the history of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) that was formally established in 2004 and “ensures reliable supplies of power, adequate transmission infrastructure, and competitive wholesale prices of electricity.” (Definition derived from the Smart Grid Dictionary.) 
The informal [...]

My blog dated April 19 focused on PG&E activities that seemed to be designed to kill the spirit and the objectives of the Smart Grid.  Since then, PG&E has admitted that mistakes were made in some meter installs (although my PG&E smart meter functions perfectly, thank you very much), the tariff change is wending its way [...]

A couple of statistics recently caught my attention.  The first was that in the month of May, Americans purchased more SUVs than any other type of vehicle.  Gas guzzlers, not hybrids or gas-sipping vehicles.  This happens while we have a catastrophic oil spill fouling critical habitat for land and marine species, along with the massive [...]

The greatest environmental disaster in US history began on April 20, two days before Earth Day.  Even if a miracle occurred and the well stopped leaking now, the damage to the marine and coastal environments will need years to recover.  Who knows – any hurricane that whips up these oiled waters may deposit pollutants miles [...]

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill now polluting fragile wetlands of several states is an environmental and economic disaster.  This is the downside of an addiction to oil, and it should serve as a potent reminder of the strategic value that electric vehicles will have to eliminating significant sources of carbon emissions and that crap [...]