Let the Innovations Locate the Smarts

An effective smart metering system should develop under competition of business models for several market segments of the power industry. Innovations should be the jury.

Let the Innovations Locate the Smarts

By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.

Systemic Consultant: Electricity

Copyright © 2007 José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without written permission from José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. Please write to javs@ieee.org to contact the author for any kind of engagement.

Guerry Waters, Vice President - Industry Strategy, Oracle SPL, and all comments so far, except perhaps that of Amatsia Kashti, have taken for granted the existence of the utility now and forever. Mr Waters even go as far as saying “Utilities, as the “jury,” must determine the answer.”

I understand that all stakeholders and the general public will be better served if the answer is determined by competition in the market, and not by the utilities under debates.

In the article Disintegrating the Grid and Retail Worlds, I wrote “Instead of trying to integrate the grid and the retail sides of the utilities, CIOs should take the results of an essential system analysis that supports the EWPC market architecture and design breakthrough paradigm shift of the power industry.”

Such market competition can be developed, in several market segments, among retail side of utilities by expanding their actions from state level to federal level in the U.S. and from country level to EU level in Europe.

Jim Beyer asks an important question: “Why could someone develop an open standard for meters?” One answer is found in the article The Sixth Disruptive Technology, is as follows:

The interface standards mentioned in the article [The Critical Role of Advanced etering Infrastructure in a World Demanding More Energy] should enable the separation of transportation and retail, which no longer will be regulated with price controls, as retail will be the subject of competition. As firmware downloads may differentiate 2GRs [Second Generation Retailer - 2GR] business plans, I am happy to recall the business case of a very low cost worldwide meter that I envisioned in my article a Dominican strategy, which was published in the May-June 2006 issue of the IEEE Power&Energy Magazine, just like they are doing for the US$100.00 laptop computer and the US$40.00 or so cellphone. Such low cost meter could be very promising for power service in the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Reference and context: Locating the Smarts in Smart Metering