Jesse Berst has written the interesting comentary
Web 2.0? Try Smart Grid 2.0 in SmartGridNews.com, which I responded with two comments so far as follows (edited to add hyperlinks):
Second Generation Retail and Prosumer Markets
Thank you Jan for your question "Fascinating breakthrough. Is this the opportunity that could open the second generation retail and prosumer markets?" It gets us out of the wireless communications and into the emerging electric power markets.
For about 100 years the power industry has been working under the Investor Owned Utilities Architecture Framework.
Following a suggestion of Jesse Berst, who browsed my blog, which has close to 200 entries, I recently wrote the article "
The Electricity Without Price Controls Architecture Framework." Its summary is:
A new approach to power energy policy design, based on system’s architecting heuristics, has led to an emerging simplified synthesis of the power industry regulatory policy. Instead of undergoing business as usual regulatory proceedings, the approach to the Electricity Without Price Controls Architecture Framework is poised to replace the Investor Owned Utilities Architecture Framework and its incremental extensions that have evolved by analytic patchwork as a extremely complex system.
To read it, please google the title or go directly to www dot energyblogs dot com / ewpc
Enabling the $4 trillion opportunityJesse writes that "... with its just-announced GridRouter developed in partnership with Duke Energy, SmartSynch is trying to do for the Smart Grid what the router did for the Internet – which means allowing any device to connect with any other device over any carrier."
Missing from the analogy is the fact that the Smart Grid high level power industry policy is under a flawed architecture. In other words, it is a dead end.
To enable such huge opportunity, the power industry needs a strong shift in the architecture framework. Next are two quotes from the article I mentioned above (which a this time has 9 comments) in response to Jan Herder's post:
"The EWPC-AF is a two tiered architecture that greatly simplifies regulations. The first level is an intermediate architecture aimed for an energy policy act, which separates the whole emergent complex system into two less complex systems. Those systems are highly cohesive with lightly coupled interfaces among them..."
"The second level architecture is reserved for proprietary architectures for open systems under the leadership of 2GRs. Most value creation will be the result of an architecture competition centered on the Silicon Valley Model, which will lead to the final architecture of the EWPC Smart Grid, which is just one of the disruptive components of the whole."
SmartSynch GridRouter is not a whole product for the power industry. It is a potential disruptive component of a competing architecture of a Second Generation Retailer (2GR) ongoing business models (In the article mentioned above, there is a link to the EWPC article The Sixth Disruptive Technology – 4220 views so far). Other competing architectures may for example be developed using CISCO's routers as a component.
Comments
However, with respect to the price of energy, there should be no doubt that the US is well behind Germany. Are you aware of what the renowned energy expert Peter Schwartz calls "the constitutional right to cheap energy," which is integral to the failure of American energy policy? Please learn about it in his blog American Energy Economics: Maximize demand and minimize supply... http://bit.ly/5vtWnn
The days of simply increasing the supply of energy to fuel ongoing economic expansion and prosperity are over. We've built an entire system and way of life that are out of kilter with the current realities of supply and demand as well as new challenges like climate change. For decades we've only paid for the exploration and production cost of our energy while ignoring the environmental, social and geopolitical price. The United States can no longer afford to be as thoughtless as we've been in the past about energy. There is no going back, we must make the radical transition from a low-cost to a high-cost energy world which will have implications with regards to where and how we live, where we work, how we go to work and where we shop and play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_293
Germans do indeed pay way too much for power, but they would otherwise be freezing in the dark with the wolves gnawing at their ankles.
in "My Point of View," Peter Schwartz wrote the following on November 22nd, 2009:
... The debate today over energy, climate change, and security is particularly misleading because it fails to recognize the reality of the American energy situation. Let me explain what I mean.
The policies that have had the greatest impact on energy demand are not about energy per se, but are social, economic, housing, transportation, and land use policies intended to make the average American a wealthy suburban home owner. Let's be clear--every country in the world is trying to make its people richer. In the US, however, we're particularly thoughtless about the consequences of our economic development for energy consumption, which has led to one of the highest per capita energy consumption rates in the world. We spread our people all over the landscape because land was cheap and abundant, causing many to drive long distances for work, school, and fun. We use our technological advances to boost performance and make devices bigger and more feature-laden at the expense of efficiency...
On the supply side, since the early seventies we have been much more adept at blocking new energy supplies than at developing them. The list of energy sources we don't like has grown progressively longer. It began with nuclear power, followed by offshore and Arctic oil and liquid natural gas (LNG) ports. Then came coal mines and power plants, and now we don't even like big wind turbines that kill birds and block views. Some of us also object to big solar developments that cover precious desert landscapes or the power lines required to bring renewable energy to the cities. No wonder that we have continued to import more oil from the Middle East, South America, and Africa.
We have also dramatically expanded our use of natural gas for electricity production. So despite substantial increases in renewable energy, our electricity systems today are more carbon intensive then they were 30 years ago. And if we do not start building more nuclear plants, these systems will become even more carbon intensive. Fortunately we had a positive supply surprise in this country with shale gas--a domestic natural gas with roughly half the emissions of coal. It has allowed us to push LNG imports further into the future and slow the pace of coal development.
"I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing -- even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation,"