Smart Grid’s Critical Thinking?

The abstract of the video The case "against" the smart grid, by Bruce Nordman [Energy Analysis Department, LBNL] states that “Amid all the current cheerleading around the ‘Smart Grid,’ there is a lack of critical thinking about the design choices underlying the dominant paradigms being put forward, and how current efforts do or don't relate to any long-term strategy we have. In addition, in the past decades we have learned a great deal about how to design and architect networks, how they evolve, how they have collided with energy use, and how they work in practice. This talk will explore some of these topics, and suggest a path forward that could result in significantly more energy savings than our present one.”

I guess that one particular exception to the cheerleading around the “Smart Grid that’s being pushed” can be found in the Electricity Without Price Controls blog. One particular example emerged today as we learn about the emerging future in a discussion on a private Linkedin group. My comment went as follows:

The T&D wires only smart grid suggested by Bruce is well in agreement with the last prediction of the article Three Smart Grid Predictions for Initiating the Global Power Industry Transformation, which says “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."

Bruce's presentation, which is three years old, is a huge paradigm shift from a utility centered "end to end" smart grid that's being pushed to a customer centered building network 'smart power service' plus a T&D wires only smart grid. As he concentrated on the building side, the article The Electric Power Industry is Missing a Vibrant Retail Market might be an important complement to his presentation.