Smart Energy Grid

Everybody seems to be jumping on the Smart Grid train these days. It's where the action is...but what exactly does "Smart Grid" mean?

I think it means a lot of things depending on your perspective in approaching it. For me it's analogous to Cloud Computing, a general concept the encompasses many faucets. For example a networking company like Silver Spring sees the Smart Grid as the need to better manage power on an aging infrastructure (typically new hardware at the users location). Microsoft, Cisco and IBM see it as a software problem. With the advent of these new smart meters at sites how will the utility companies manage and use the boat loads of information that will result? Then there are the companies that actually have a hand in creating new energy, like Sunpower (solar panels) or Tessera (desert solar farms). How does this energy get to where it's needed? Well new wires.

This are all pieces of the Smart Grid. Ultimately it's the utility companies that will be responsible for bringing these parts together, creating a new mesh infrastructure to manage our power needs going forward. I see the Smart Grid as the decentralization of power generation.

Rather than having than having a few huge plants producing electricity power might come from a desert solar plant, tidal generating stations or wind farms off the coast. The utilites will be able to move power from a tract of homes with solar panels generating excess to their neighbors across the street. During heavy demand they might even pull energy from the batteries in your electric car parked in the garage.

All these solutions together are important in the scope of things. So don't get caught up in the term, keep it in perspective and realize it's a good thing.