Smart Grid Library

Saturday, January 28 is International Data Privacy Day.  It’s a great opportunity to think about new data created as a result of the modernization of our electrical grid into the Smart Grid, and what this means for our privacy.  Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is credited with the quote:  “Knowledge is power.”  Agreed.  Understanding what this [...]

Every business wants to grow the sales of their product or service – telecom carriers want you to consume more minutes of smart phone use, restaurants want you to eat out more often, and retailers love to see repeat customers walk into their stores.  It would be counterproductive to have, for instance, restaurants invest in [...]

In the movie “The Graduate”, Dustin Hoffman’s character was told that the future was in plastics.  Today, he’d be told that the future is in data analytics.  Just like many other business sectors are discovering, analytics will play an increasingly significant role in the management of Smart Grid networks.    As mentioned in my previous blog, [...]

Smart Grid deployments are not only delivering improved energy security, grid reliability, and consumer control to us, they are bringing the Internet of Things closer to reality.  The Internet of Things (IoT) is defined in the Smart Grid Dictionary as a conceptual description of the ability to connect any objects with an IP address and some [...]

The Smart Grid presents a number of challenges to policy-makers and utilities, but perhaps none is more vexing than the question of who will educate consumers about the rewards and risks of energy consumption data that can be derived from smart meters and increasingly from products that can disaggregate electricity “signatures” to determine usage of [...]

Data analytics solutions will be prominent tools for managing Smart Grid networks – both power and communications – at the distribution level and at the grid edge.  This is one of the common conclusions based on recent interviews with two companies, Aclara and PreClarity Utilities.   Whether the data being analyzed is to develop the most [...]

The recent exits of Google’s PowerMeter and Microsoft’s Hohm products targeted at consumers have some industry watchers asking if residential consumers really care about home energy consumption data.  Where we once had a monthly bill that simply indicated the previous month’s kilowatthours of electricity use, smart meters can provide data as often as needed (although [...]

It’s big, complex, mission-critical, constantly in flux, and experiencing a convergence of information technologies (IT) and operations technologies (OT).  The distribution grid is the link of the electricity supply chain from the substation to the residential or commercial meter.  It has different characteristics and therefore different data analytics challenges in contrast to the transmission grid [...]

Silicon Valley is always chasing the next killer app, and it’s an activity that is very relevant to the Smart Grid.  What are the killer apps?  It depends on your perspective.  In some cases, the answer will be a technology breakthrough in materials science rather than an innovation in software or communications – which will [...]

The recent announcements about the retirements of Google’s PowerMeter and Microsoft’s Hohm are not causes for concern for Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) vendors.  These were early starts that helped educate the market about the value of energy consumption data.  However, like many pioneers, they contributed knowledge that will benefit other Smart Grid solution vendors.  [...]