Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio | Jul 30, 2010
Are We Building the Grid @$$ Backwards? is a very timely and excellent article written by Jesse Carson, under which I posted the following comment:
Hi Jesse,
According to the EWPC article Three Smart Grid Predictions for Initiating the Global Power Industry Transformation, which “update the comprehensive white paper written by… [you, but] named by the Edison Electric Institute as The First Push: How a utility positions itself for success as smart technologies transform markets means seeing what domino falls first,” this excellent piece is well is in synchronicity with a strategy based on Prediction #3: Repositioning the utilities that missed the opportunities to learn the lessons of other industries is bound to be in a restricted T&D Grid space that will sooner or later be ‘painfully consolidated.’"
Before making that specific prediction, in the comment Let's Initiate the SG Transformation While T&D Jobs Comeback, posted under the Intelligent Utility Inside article Baltimore G&E: AMI Comeback?, by Phil Carson, my conclusion was “For all of the above reasons, I suggest that DOE should shift the stimulus funds to BGE’s T&D construction investments. I think BGE should try to get DOE consent for filing construction projects to the Maryland PSC to meet the July 30 deadline. Those projects may generate many jobs and serve to stimulate the economy. Other states all over the world should follow the suggested shift.”
S&C Electric President and CEO John Estey critique that “You don’t need a big-bang solution. You can put it where you need it the most and then grow from there,” applies such big-bang perfectly well to what I named as the smart grid that is being pushed. As can be seen in the EWPC postSynchronicity of the Emerging Whole Power Industry, under the EWPC-AF you don’t need a big-bang solution either:
“Instead of using a regulated standard (not smart but) brute meter attack to force customers, well in line with your affirmation and with the three predictions mentioned above, in the (architecture competition) market approach customers will end up behaving like a herd, where ineffective whole (that is what customers need) products and services are weeded out (maybe together with their meters) in The Chasm of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC). ..To make it truly effective, it is only those smart customers that lead the herd that need complete education to be able to exert full free choice…”
Best regards,
José Antonio
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Comments
Thank you ...,
The title of my first comment under the original article is "Avoiding the Big-Bang Advanced Metering Infrastructure." As you will see below, SM rollouts under the EWPC-AF are not longer premature as you wisely observe.
In another wise observation that fit the non-Big-Band approach, that "Smart Meters (as we have them now) will need to be replaced by even smarter meters," customers will be able to get the whole product and service that best meet their needs when they are ready according to their place in the TALC.
In the TALC, customers [that could be prosumers no simple consumers] are dynamically segmented [to receive something they perceive as "tangible and immediately available upsides," quoting a member of another LinkedIn group] into 1) Innovators (that just try it!), 2) Early Adopters (that get ahead of the herd), 3) Early Majority (that stick with the herd), 4) Late Majority (that stick with what's proven), and 5) Laggards (that just say no!).
The EWPC article Is the Smart Grid that is Being Pushed a Costly Mistake? ( http://bit.ly/a1xOvl )" says that "As shown by Geoffrey A. Moore, in his book "Crossing the Chasm," a Business Week Bestseller, "The real news, however, is not the two cracks in the bell curve, the one between the innovators and the early adopters, the other between early and late majority. No, the real news is the deep and dividing chasm that separates the early adopters from the early majority. This is by far the most formidable and unforgiving transition in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, and it is the more dangerous because it typically goes unrecognized."
Moore identifies two processes that go on after crossing The Chasm, the Bowling Alley, which results in few competitors, and the Tornado, which is where roll-outs should occur.