RNE has an article on the rapidly maturing microgrid market combining solar panels and energy storage - Carnegie, Lendlease join forces to target “massive” microgrid market.

Both companies already have considerable skin in the microgrid game, including together, on the community-level battery storage pilot kicked off last year in the northern suburbs of Perth – a sustainable community development at Alkimos Beach that combines 1.1MWh of lithium-ion battery storage with more than 100 rooftop solar homes, and is testing different electricity tariff options and retail models.

Technology review has a look at research into how to increase the penetration of renewable energy into national electricity grids - A Sneak Peek of the National Grid on Renewables.

A new $135 million research facility aims to solve a puzzle: how can countries prepare for an energy system that relies heavily on renewable energy? It can also test ways to improve reliability under stress, for example when demand soars in the summer as the air-conditioning load taxes the grid.

Because wind and solar energy supply power intermittently, they create challenges for grid operators. Other new energy technologies are coming online, too, including electric vehicles, energy storage, efficient buildings that cut power use during peak times, and small-scale natural-gas generators and fuel cells. Integrating these technologies on a large scale presents challenges to grid operators.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, created the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) to understand how to best operate the pieces of a more diverse energy system. Drawing on a supercomputer and power equipment that can create a megawatt-scale mini-grid within the facility, product engineers and utilities can simulate the impact of new technologies without causing problems to functioning grids.

Regions with a high percentage of wind and solar now rely on daily forecasts and stand-by fossil-fuel power plants to maintain reliable service. But once renewable energy is more than 20 percent of capacity, grid planners need more sophisticated tools, says Benjamin Kroposki, director of energy systems integration at NREL. “We saw this big shift. If we are successful in reaching cost targets for individual technologies, then what? You need to start doing systems integration,” he says.

An NREL analysis published last year found that, with a more flexible system, the U.S. could get 80 percent of its electricity from existing renewable energy technologies by 2050 (see “The U.S. Could Run on 80 Percent Renewable Electricity by 2050”). Germany and Denmark already have about 20 percent renewable electricity and Germany plans to achieve around 80 percent renewable energy, in both electric power and transportation, by 2050.

Technology Review has a series of reports on the intersection of computing and the electrical grid, including this article by eSolar's Bill Gross on improving the price and performance of solar thermal power plants - a textbook example of Bucky Fuller's concept of "ephemeralization" - The Intersection Of Information And Energy.

I believe that we will need great ingenuity to enable our planet to provide successfully for more than seven billion human beings, let alone the nine billion that will probably inhabit it by 2050, and I believe that information technology will make this ingenuity possible. Because of fluid marketplaces and an ever more globalized economy, nearly every important resource is becoming scarcer and more costly. Evidence of this is seen in the price not only of oil but also of aluminum, concrete, wood, water, rare-earth elements, and even common elements like copper. Everything is getting more expensive because billions of people are trying creatively to repackage and consume these materials. But there is one resource whose price has consistently has gone down: computation.

The power, cost, and energy use involved in one unit of computation is declining at a more consistent, dependable rate than we have seen with any other commodity in human history. That declining cost curve must be tapped to lower energy prices—and I believe it will be. This will happen as people ask: To achieve my purpose (in designing whatever device or system), can I use more "atoms" or more "bits" (computation power)? The choice will have to be bits, because atoms are going up in price while bits are going down.

Here are a few examples. When designing a car, one can put a bit more effort into stronger, lighter-weight materials, which will increase energy efficiency but possibly drive up cost; or one can put a lot more effort into using computational power to run simulations that optimize the use of materials. Today, computational fluid dynamics allow a designer to accurately design a new shape of car, put it in a computer wind tunnel instead of a physical one, and test 1,000,000 body designs to improve fuel mileage by significant amounts. This was never before possible for those constructing vehicles.

In solar energy, large fields of mirrors or photovoltaic panels can be optimized to be lighter, more reliable, and more power-efficient by putting a $2 microprocessor in every panel. An onboard computer that lets each panel track the sun independently replaces previous systems that used more steel, bigger gears, and bigger gearboxes—basically, more materials. As little as 10 years ago, the computing power and sensors needed to build a closed-loop, sun-tracking solar panel might have cost $2,000, or more than the panel itself, and thus the system would not have been cost effective. But with computing costs coming down by a factor of 1,000 every 15 years, all kinds of new opportunities arise to improve system design.

At eSolar, one of our companies, we designed and built a utility-scale solar-thermal power plant with a huge amount of computation embedded into the field of mirrors. We reduced the size of the components, cut the installation expense, and drove the cost of the system down to nearly half what had been achieved before. This experience proved to me the feasibility of replacing atoms with bits.

The price reduction curve for computing is not over—it's continuing, and each year will open up further avenues for ingenuity. That is important because our current energy resources are not at all easy to compete with. Fuels that we dig out of the ground and burn are extremely cheap. They are, in effect, the concentrated storage of millions of years of sunlight falling on Earth. Ironically, the biggest component of energy costs is the expense of moving the fuel to consumers from where it's obtained—and transportation costs are mostly fuel, too. So we are in a kind of vicious cycle. The way to break free of fossil fuels is to introduce something new to our energy equation that isn't fuel.

I believe ingenuity in the form of information technology is the only variable that offers sufficient leverage. We need to replace a cheap, unsustainable form of energy with sustainable forms of energy that are equally cheap. The only way to compete with cheap fuels is to be more clever with computation; that is, to use as little of anything else as possible.

Smart meters continue to get bad press everywhere - partly from bad communication (no one seems to understand what benefits they could offer), partly from bad products (which don't do enough to be really useful) and partly from the absence of dynamic, realtime power pricing to make a decent implementation useful. The Age has an example of the lack of enthusiasm in the Australian market today - Smart meters given a fail.

VICTORIA'S experiment in rolling out so-called ''smart electricity meters'' is unlikely to be seen in New South Wales soon, with the head of one of the largest electricity distributors casting doubt on their merit. Last year in Victoria, the cost of the program blew out to $2 billion from initial estimates of $800 million.

''Is the business case in place? I'd have to say it's not,'' George Maltabarow, the managing director of Ausgrid, told a forum recently. ''Victoria is a very good example of that. ...

NSW has been slower to move, and the merging of information technology and electricity grids coupled with the large price declines of the necessary equipment means that there was no advantage in being the first to act.

Smart meters allow households to monitor their power consumption and reduce use during peak price periods, which can help reduce electricity networks investing in equipment otherwise used only a few hours a year. ...

In NSW, Ausgrid has more than 400,000 first-generation smart meters installed, with 250,000 customers on ''time-of-use'' contracts. Mr Maltabarow estimated that these households reduced their electricity bills by as much as $270 a year, on average, with time-of-use contracts, while the median saving is about $70 a year. Other NSW electricity distributors have been on the back foot in adopting the technology as well, due to the cost of rolling out the meters and limited benefit. ...

Under the federal government's ''smart cities smart grid'' program, Ausgrid is rolling out smart meters that have communication capabilities, which will enable it, with TruEnergy which bought the company's retailing operations earlier this year, to test differing pricing products combined with feedback technology, Mr Maltabarow said.

The ABC reports that utilities haven't been helping public perception of smart meter programs by overcharging for their installation - Power companies overstate cost of smart meters.

The Australian Energy Regulator that says Victoria's power companies have overstated the cost of rolling out smart meters by $500 million.

In a draft decision, the regulator says CitiPower, Jemena, Powercor, SP AusNet and United Energy Distribution have not made a good enough case for charging $1.24 billion for the three-year roll out.

Andrew Reeves, the chairman of the electricity and gas regulator, says the cost increase is not justified.
"On their numbers put in front of us, charges would typically go up from currently about $100 a year to about $160 a year," he told ABC Local Radio.

"Under our proposal the charges would still increase, but would only increase by about an additional $20 a year."

The regulator says the cost of the rollout should be $760 million.

Energy Minister Michael O'Brien says the State Government was always concerned that costs were not properly scrutinised by the former Labor government.
"We'll be making our own submissions to the regulator before they make a final decision.

ECOS Magazine has a primer on smart grids - Smartening up the grid.

Experts are calling for an energy sector makeover – a ‘smart’ upgrade of our ageing electricity grid to create a network that can better respond to changing supply and demand, and bring our electricity system securely into the future. It will require an integrated response involving researchers, industry, government and consumers.

Dr Lilley is involved in CSIRO’s Future Grid project, which is developing a modelling framework that will help determine the most efficient and least-cost design of the grid. The framework is due to be finalised in the next one to two years.

‘The project aims to deliver economic modelling, power systems modelling and social analysis, to ensure that we make the most out of our centralised and decentralised assets,’ explains Dr Lilley. ‘Within this, smart grid technology is an enabling technology to both make the grid more efficient, and allow the integration of existing and new technologies, including renewable generators.’

Smart grids don’t necessarily require a reinvention of the wheel. Dr David Cornforth, is Project Leader at CSIRO’s Renewable Energy Integration Facility (REIF) at the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle, New South Wales. He there is a lot of potential to apply new and existing technologies to the current electricity grid. These are not necessarily quick fix solutions, he adds: the development of smarter grids is likely to continue over the next 20 years.

Smart Grid Smart Cities

What will the smart grid look like? Dr Glenn Platt, CSIRO’s Energy Technology Research Group Leader, says families will see the change through increased information, enabling them to ‘understand and make much more informed decisions on energy use’.

Behind the scenes, however, significant changes to electricity infrastructure are already occurring. To determine how a smart grid might work in practice, the federal government initiated Smart Grid Smart Cities (SGSC), a commercial?scale project being rolled out across five sites in Sydney and the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. With $100 million in federal funding, the project is being led by Ausgrid, a NSW-government owned energy infrastructure maintenance company, and involves a consortium of businesses ranging from IBM Australia to Newcastle City Council.

SGSC is not the only smart grid trial happening in Australia. But, as Mr Popple explains, this particular trial is important because it is a commercial?scale ‘community trial’, which will investigate regulatory and consumer uptake factors, as well as new technology solutions.

CSIRO has been heavily involved in the development phase of the trial. Dr Platt explains that while the organisation’s exact role in the next stage rollout is still being determined, it is likely to involve new control techniques that sit on top of the smart grid infrastructure Ausgrid is implementing, to deliver ‘even greater benefits’.

The breadth of CSIRO’s research into more intelligent energy systems reflects both the complexity and scale of these systems, as well as the recognised potential to develop least-cost smart grids, and more generally, a smarter electricity system.

Integrating renewables

The increase in renewable energy being fed into the network is one factor currently causing problems for network providers. In response, Dr Cornforth’s team at the REIF is researching the challenge of how to best couple the intermittence or variability of renewable energy into the grid without disturbing the ‘finely balanced’ grid system.

The team is looking at three main techniques in response to problems caused by power surges through the grid from renewable generation. These are: mixing intermittent renewable energy sources, such as solar photovoltaics, with more controllable sources, such as gas; different types of energy storage; and load control, which involves controlling the consumption of electricity.

‘It’s difficult to say what mix of these three [techniques] we will have, but it’s almost certain that all three will be part of the future solution – part of the smart grid of the future,’ says Dr Cornforth.

To facilitate wide research, the REIF is connected to solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, natural gas?powered combined heat and power cogeneration units, a load bank, inverters and three different types of battery storage. In relation to storage, the facility is looking at ‘how’ and ‘when’ questions. These include how to determine the ideal amount of renewable energy for the network given the additional cost of battery storage, and how to control that storage in terms of the best time to charge or discharge batteries. ...

More information

Smart Grid Australia: www.smartgridaustralia.com.au

CSIRO Energy Technology: www.csiro.au/org/ET.html

CSIRO SGSC: www.csiro.au/partnerships/Smart-grid-smart-city.html

CSIRO Intelligent Energy: www.csiro.au/science/Intelligent-Energy.html

CSIRO Renewable Energy Integration Facility: www.csiro.au/places/Renewable-Energy-Integration-Facility.html

GE's "Imagination Network" has an interesting video on smart grids from an Australian viewpoint - The Smart Grid".

The video can't be reduced in size and my blogger template isn't really compatible with large width embeds, so you might want to go to the link to watch it...

Australian IT News has a look at a smart grid project within AusGrid, increasing the level of data available about the distribution network - Ausgrid zeroes in on network faults.

Energy utility AusGrid has deployed monitoring devices in 2300 street-level cabinets in an ongoing effort to gain a more granular visibility of its electricity distribution network.

The utility had previously announced it would roll out the PowerSense devices in 12,000 of its 30,000 street-level power distribution boxes, coupled with a back-end data analysis system supplied by IBM.

The IBM system was funded as part of the Federal Government’s $100 million ‘Smart Grids, Smart Cities’ program, in which Ausgrid - formerly EnergyAustralia - has been trialling smart grid hardware, meters and applications at select areas in Sydney, the Hunter Valley region and Newcastle.

Ausgrid managing director George Maltabarow told iTnews that the newly deployed sensors would measure voltage and current between Ausgrid’s high voltage (11,000V) major zone substations and its street-level distribution units, where the current is converted into the 240V current used in households.

He said the sensors indicated whether there was any service interruptions on that street and what loads the equipment were carrying.

“The system has already proved itself in emergency situations,” he said. “We have already had major failures and used the system to prioritise and optimise where in the network we put generators in to provide supply.”

Diagnostic data was transmitted over a 3G network to larger substations, and then to the utility's central IT systems for monitoring and analysis over a fibre network.

Maltabarow said Ausgrid’s SCADA system had previously only provided visibility into the high voltage segment of the network. “Without this technology, we don’t know what’s going on in the [lower-voltage] distribution network,” he said.

The project was designed to deliver second-by-second analysis of faults in the utility’s electricity grid, with the same level of information previously only available to the company on an annual basis. ...

Once AusGrid has better data on its distribution network, the power utility will use a custom 4G network using a mixture of WiMAX and LTE technologies over spectrum leased from vividwireless to connect street-level distribution units to smart meters installed in residential premises.

The meters would optimise transmission and address service outages right down to the level of the individual customer. It would also allow customers to monitor their own energy usage at a house level and with individual devices, allowing room for potential customer rebates to incentivise energy consumption.

Maltabarow said AusGrid has identified 144 sites for antennae builds for a 4G network to complement these meters, 60 of which are already under construction.

Earth2Tech has a report on Google’s abandonment of its PowerMeter experiment - 5 reasons Google PowerMeter didn’t take off.

Google officially shuttered its web energy tool PowerMeter Friday after the application failed to bring in enough users. For those who have watched PowerMeter’s slow slog over its two-year lifespan, the move to kill it isn’t all that shocking. But the application, which enabled people to monitor and manage their home energy consumption, does have an important legacy as one of the first examples of how the Internet and broadband will change the way people consume energy.

Here are some of the reasons why I think PowerMeter didn’t take off:

1. It’s early. The market for energy management tools is still in a really early stage. Consumers are largely unaware of the tools and technologies available to monitor and manage their own energy. The Consumer Electronics Association found that 64 percent of consumers are unaware of electricity management programs, and 66 percent of consumers aren’t familiar with the smart grid. Google launched its PowerMeter tool in early 2009, when very few smart meters and smart grid network deployments had been installed in the U.S.

2. Opt-in, not opt-out. In this early stage of the market, it seems like programs that are opt-out (sent unless the customer says they don’t want it), not opt-in (only sent if the customer wants it), are the ones working. OPower has been successful largely because it connected with utilities early on, and OPower’s detailed energy bills and energy savings recommendations, are delivered to utility customers automatically. A utility is one of a few types of companies that can send its customers this type of information without getting an opt-in agreement, and the mailed OPower energy bills have a very high open rate, because they look just like a utility energy bill. ...

3. Utility friend or foe? Since Google first launched PowerMeter, some utilities saw the tool as a threat to the relationship they have with their customers. … At the same time, when Google first launched PowerMeter, it focused on connecting with data from smart meters, then later opened its API and connected with gadget makers to circumvent smart meters. Smart meters were in a very early stage then (and relatively still are), and are the end devices for utilities (utilities are behind their installments). …

4. Direct to consumer. Perhaps Google would have been better served if it created PowerMeter to go directly to the consumer originally, but did it in its own algorithm-focused way. Earth Aid, for example, uses algorithms to take utility data straight from an online utility account if the consumer gives Earth Aid permission to link that account to its system, and Earth Aid doesn’t need utility partnerships. …

5. Google isn’t an energy company. Google didn’t ever really market PowerMeter, and PowerMeter came out of its philanthropic arm Google.org. It was an experiment, and one that didn’t work. Despite the amount of funding Google has been putting into clean power, Google isn’t an energy supplier or manager at heart. ...

SmartMeters.com has a post on the progress of smart grids in Denmark - Denmark Embraces the Smart Grid.

Denmark has quietly become one of the world’s smart grid leaders. With nearly twice the variable energy on the grid than any other country, Denmark has developed the prototype for a flexible, intelligent electricity system, thanks to the work of Danish technology companies, investors, system integrators, utilities, and researchers. Denmark currently integrates 34 percent renewables into the grid. …

The high penetration of wind power in the electric grid makes Denmark an ideal testing ground for optimizing power consumption of intermittent power sources. This has resulted in several projects and partnerships, such as Danish utility DONG Energy’s equity participation in California based Project Better Place’s franchise in Denmark, the first in Europe. In late 2011, the partners will launch a commercial, nationwide network of EV charging and battery swap stations.

DONG Energy consultant Torben V. Holm, explains, “We can now combine the existing electric infrastructure with batteries in electric vehicles to harvest and store wind-generated power when it is in excess supply and have it available for value creating transportation purposes when needed."

EcoGrid EU, also launching in 2001, is the largest European smart grid demonstration project, which is being implemented on the Danish island of Bornholm, where 10 percent of households will participate. By changing load pattern, the households will participate in keeping the power system stable, even though more than 50 percent of power is produced from decentralized and renewable sources. ...

Denmark’s goal is to incorporate 50 percent of electricity from wind by 2025, and to be completely fossil fuel free by 2050.

Giles Parkinson has an in-depth look at Origin Energy's interest in smart grids - Origin of an energy revolution.

The roll-out of in-house display systems for energy use promises to revolutionise the way the consumers understand and consume energy.

Origin, the largest retailer in the country, has kicked it off by announcing the largest pilot scheme of in-home displays in Australia – one that will involve 5,000 households over the next six months. But the rollout has far greater implications than consumer experience: it also promises to revolutionise the way that energy utilities conduct their business.

The basic business model of the energy utility has not changed for decades. It’s a simple model that revolves around selling as many electrons to as many customers as they can. But technology has caught up with the industry and, combined with the need to respond to rising costs, conserve energy and reduce emissions, the rollout of the “smarts” – meters, displays and appliances – is poised to cause as dramatic a restructuring as occurred in the banking industry in the 1980s and the telecommunications industry in the 1990s.

How the utilities manage that transformation could decide how they evolve and maintain influence over their industry, as the major banks have managed to do in theirs, and how much third party corporates such as Google, Intel and others come to play a dominant role, as a range of new companies have done in telecommunications.

“We’ve been in one paradigm for the last 100 years,” says Phil Craig, the head of retail at Origin Energy. “The electrons came down the poles and wires, you got the bill in the mail and you went into the post office and wrote the check. That hasn’t changed much, but we re now looking at a whole different model.”

A report released last year by Ernst & Young entitled Seeing Energy Differently described the challenge facing energy utilities in dealing with the providers of new “smart technology” and responding to the demands of improved efficiency. Basically it came down to two options: either the utilities form partnerships with third parties to help consumers manage their energy and evolve the model into a new, sophisticated form of energy service; or they stonewall and come under competitive attack all along the value chain.

Origin has clearly decided to evolve rather than having change thrust upon them. “The telecommunications industry is not like it was 15 years ago, it has experienced radical change,” says Craig. “That‘s what is going to happen to energy over the next 10 years, so we want to be in the best position to manage that.”

Origin has chosen as its partner the Colorado-based Tendril, which provides an in-home display that allows customers “unprecedented visibility” into energy usage, personalised estimates of monthly electricity bills and the ability to control household consumption. It allows communications over the web, mobile phone and home area networks, and can link with smart appliances and electric vehicles. And, of course, the energy company can see this information too.

Exactly how that business model will evolve is not yet clear because there are so many different factors that can still be brought to bear. But for Australian energy consumers, in-house displays – which look something like the dashboard displays in your car – are not far away. After the six-month pilot, Origin intends to then roll out the displays to all its 4.6 million customers – although the extent to which this can happen will depend on the rollout of the underlying infrastructure, which in this case is smart meters.

Craig says that by the end of the decade, consumers can expect to have smart appliances in their home that can respond to a pricing signal and turn themselves off. There will be charge points in the garage where the plug-in electric vehicle can choose the best time to charge itself, or even send electrons back into the grid. And, says Davis, there could be much larger solar systems on our homes.

And just as electric vehicle batteries will be able to be purchased under a leasing phone, just as people buy plans for their mobile phone, consumers might want to negotiate similar packages with their electricity supplier, possibly via third parties such as electrical retailers.

Technology Review notes that “Installing "smart meters" and upgrading utility networks will force electricity providers to process far more information than they're accustomed to handling” - The Challenges of Big Data on the Smart Grid.

The average big electric utility is a sprawling network that is buzzing with energy but contains surprisingly little data about that energy. Managers at utilities can't "see" very deep into the thousands of substations and relay units that make up the electrical grid. Some utilities still learn about a neighborhood electrical outage not because it shows up on any of their sophisticated monitoring equipment, but because customers call them on the phone and complain that the power's out.

This paucity of real-time information is one of the challenges that utility companies and IT vendors are addressing with a modernization effort known as the "smart grid." Once utilities and consumers have finer-grained information about power use, both the supply of power and the demand for it can be managed more efficiently. For instance, consumers could be guided to move some electricity consumption to off-peak hours, reducing the need for dirtier and more expensive power plants to be activated at peak hours.

But before this can happen on a widespread basis, the utilities need to prepare for an onslaught of data—as other industries have done. The challenge of upgrading IT systems accordingly is one of the reasons the smart grid is "in its infancy," says Donald Kintner Jr., a spokesman for the utility-sponsored Electric Power Research Institute.

"What energy companies are about to experience isn't simply a doubling or tripling of the amount of data they will be getting," says Jeff Taft, who works on smart-grid efforts at Cisco Systems, the networking company. "Instead, it's going to be an increase of multiple orders of magnitude. The industry knows this and is slowly making the transition. But energy is one of those areas where you can't just rip everything out and start all over."

Technology Review has an article on one of the components required to build the smart grid - Smart Transformers.

In a lab wired up to simulate a residential neighborhood, Alex Huang is working to revamp aging power grids into something more like the Internet—a network that might direct energy not just from centralized power stations to consumers but from any source to any destination, by whatever route makes the most sense. To that end, Huang, a professor of electrical engineering at North Carolina State University, is reinventing the transformers that currently reduce the voltage of the electricity distributed to neighborhoods so that it’s suitable for use in homes and offices.

His new transformer will make it easier for the grid to cope with things it was never designed for, like charging large numbers of electric vehicles and tapping surplus electricity from residential solar panels. Smart meters in homes and offices can help by providing fine-grained information about the flow of electricity, but precise control over that flow is needed too. Not only would this stabilize the grid, but it would better balance supply and demand, reducing spikes so that fewer power plants would be needed to guarantee the electricity supply.

“We need a radically new device to sit between homes and grid to provide a buffer, so that the grid will remain stable no matter what is going on in the homes,” Huang says. Conventional transformers handle only AC power and require manual adjustment or bulky electromechanical switches to redirect energy. What he wants is a compact transformer that can handle DC as well as AC and can be electronically controlled so that it will respond almost instantaneously to fluctuations in supply and demand. If one neighbor plugged an electric car into an AC charger, for example, it could respond by tapping otherwise unneeded DC power from another neighbor’s solar panels.

To build such a transformer, Huang started developing transistors and other semiconductor-based devices that can handle thousands of volts, founding the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center at NC State in 2008. His first transformer had silicon-based components, but silicon is too unreliable for large-scale use at high voltages. So Huang has pioneered the development of transformers with semiconductors based on compounds of silicon and carbon or gallium and nitrogen, which are more reliable in high-power applications. He expects to have a test version of the silicon-carbon transformer ready in two years and to have a device that utilities can test in five years.

Huang’s transformers would make connecting a solar panel or electric car to the grid as simple as connecting a digital camera or printer to a computer. That would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels by making it easier for small-scale sources of cleaner energy to contribute to the grid. He says, “The real benefit to society will come when there’s an aggregate effect from many, many small generators, which we hope will be renewable and sustainable energy sources.”

Smart Grid News has a look at the evolving business model of smart grid technology provider Silver Spring Networks - The evolution of Silver Spring Networks.

No, I don't know why Silver Spring Networks (SSN) failed to go public last year as widely expected. And yes, I asked during my latest briefing. And no, Executive Vice President Eric Dresselhuys wouldn't answer my IPO questions.

But I do know that the delay could end up for the best. In that intervening year, SSN has matured its vision in a way that could increase its valuation. And it all comes down to one word: Platform.

The evolution of a vision

Take a look at SSN's self description circa 2005:

Silver Spring Networks connects utilities with their customers over a two-way, real-time network...

And how it described itself a year ago at the height of the IPO speculation:

Silver Spring Networks is a leading smart grid solution provider...

Now look at how it describes itself today:

Silver Spring Networks is a leading smart grid platform provider...

You can see the evolution visually as well. Look at the nearby drawing taken from SSN's Web site. In its early days, SSN thought of itself as a communications provider -- the blue layer at the bottom. Today, its vision embraces the blue layer plus the platform in the middle. It even reaches up into the green applications layer with the help of more than 40 companies now certified as SSN partners.

So what's the big deal about platforms?

Smart Grid News has been preaching about the value of platforms for years. I think they are essential to smart grid progress. (For a primer, review our survival guide to the smart grid platform by professor Geoffrey Parker, Director of the Tulane Energy Institute). Done right, platforms are good for the provider and good for customers too.

And they're really good if you want to go public. IPO underwriters and investors love the word "platform." To them it stands for high growth and high barriers to competition. Microsoft has a computing platform. Cisco has a network platform. Qualcomm has a cellular platform. Google has a search platform.

If I were going public, that's the kind of company I would want to keep. Smart grid platform has a very nice ring.

There's another aspect to SSN's evolution: It has moved away from an over-reliance on smart metering. Look back at SSN's platform drawing. It now shows five applications. Not just metering, but also distribution automation, demand response, smart home and electric vehicles. Of those five, metering is nearing a plateau but the other four are growing, especially DA and DR.

By expanding its vision, SSN has inserted itself into those growth paths. Most market researchers expect smart meter sales to plateau in 2012. But they expect both OT (operational technology including distribution automation) and IT (information technology) to surge, with each one climbing to tens of billions in annual sales worldwide. They have equally cheerful predictions for the demand response sector.

Technology Review has an article on Schneider Electric's "Le Hive" HQ in Paris, which serves as a test bed for their energy efficiency concepts - A Test Bed for Smart Buildings.

Traditional techniques such as adding insulation or window caulk can make buildings more energy efficient, but those strategies go only so far in reducing energy bills. Smart building systems linked to the smart grid offer a more comprehensive way to reduce consumption.

One company that has invested heavily in smart buildings is Schneider Electric, a 174-year-old French conglomerate that makes software and hardware for energy-efficient buildings. To test its own products, the company built a new headquarters campus near La Défense, the Parisian business district. Known as "Le Hive," the collection of interconnected buildings is a test bed for advanced sensor, measurement, analysis, and control technologies that promise to reduce the electricity bill for Schneider while proving to potential customers how powerful the technologies are.

Le Hive opened at the end of 2008, and it now holds more than 1,700 employees. There are no special energy-efficiency tricks embedded in the design of the building—it is typical of most new construction in Europe. The company wanted to use building systems to reduce energy consumption and not depend on expensive construction techniques that most building owners couldn't afford.

Schneider's goals for its headquarters were straightforward. The average electricity consumption of an office building in Paris is 400 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year. The European Union has directed that all buildings reduce consumption to 50 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year by 2030. Le Hive was meant to demonstrate that the path toward that goal can be quick and relatively painless. The company has reduced its headquarters' energy consumption from more than 300 kilowatt-hours per square meter to 65.

The Schneider system, dubbed EcoStruxure, started by collecting and analyzing data on the building's energy consumption patterns. Then a series of software and hardware components were installed, all of which can be controlled from a single interface such as a laptop or smart phone. In other words, the heating system, the air-conditioning system, the lighting management system, the security system, the fire control system, the surveillance system, the IT system, and the ventilation system (all of which used to be discrete systems with separate controls and dedicated technicians and managers) are all integrated into a single comprehensive building management system with a single point of control.

Next, RFID cards were distributed to every employee. Each card alerts a sensor system to where the employee is and adjusts the lighting and HVAC systems accordingly. A worker leaves his office for lunch, for instance, and the lights and air-conditioner in that office turn off immediately. He returns and the comfort settings he has requested kick right in. Other sensors turn the artificial lighting up or down in accordance with the available sunlight. Similarly, an automated window shading system adjusts itself in calibration with the cooling, heating, and lighting needs. If the blinds are open and sunlight is streaming in, then the lighting system dims by just the right amount to maintain a consistent environment.

Technology Review has an article on new solid-state power-management devices which "will charge cars fast and make the power grid more flexible and efficient" - A Way to Make the Smart Grid Smarter.

New semiconductor-based devices for managing power on the grid could make the "smart grid" even smarter. They would allow electric vehicles to be charged fast and let utilities incorporate large amounts of solar and wind power without blackouts or power surges. These devices are being developed by a number of groups, including those that recently received funding from the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) and the National Science Foundation.

As utilities start to roll out the smart grid, they are focused on gathering information, such as up-to-the-minute measurements of electricity use from smart meters installed at homes and businesses. But as the smart grid progresses, they'll be adding devices, such as smart solid-state transformers, that will strengthen their control over how power flows through their lines, says Alex Huang, director of a National Research Foundation research center that's developing such devices. "If smart meters are the brains of the smart grid," he says, "devices such as solid-state transformers are the muscle." These devices could help change the grid from a system in which power flows just one way—from the power station to consumers—to one in which homeowners and businesses commonly produce power as well.

Today's transformers are single-function devices. They change the voltage of electricity from one level to another, such as stepping it down from the high voltages at which power is distributed to the 120- and 240-volt levels used in homes. The new solid-state transformers are much more flexible. They use transistors and diodes and other semiconductor-based devices that, unlike the transistors used in computer chips, are engineered to handle high power levels and very fast switching. In response to signals from a utility or a home, they can change the voltage and other characteristics of the power they produce. They can put out either AC or DC power, or take in AC and DC power from wind turbines and solar panels and change the frequency and voltage to what's needed for the grid. They have processors and communications hardware built in, allowing them to communicate with utility operators, other smart transformers, and consumers.

The devices are so flexible that researchers are still working out how to make the best use of them. There are several possibilities. Today, charging an electric vehicle at home takes many hours, even if it's plugged into a special charger with 220/240-volt circuits rather than more common 110/120-volt outlets. Direct-current chargers can cut the time for charging a 24-kilowatt-hour pack like the one in the new Nissan Leaf from eight hours to just 30 minutes, but they're inefficient, wasting about 10 to 12 percent of the power that comes in to them. The new transformers could replace these special chargers, and they're more efficient, wasting only about 4 percent of the power, says Arindam Maitra, a senior project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, which is developing smart transformers.

What's more, because the transformers have communications and processing capability, if several neighbors plug in their cars to charge at the same time, the transformers can prevent circuits from being overloaded by slowing or postponing charging based on consumer preferences and price signals from the utility. The same devices can also be used to send DC power from solar panels to the grid, eliminating the need for some equipment currently used to convert the power from solar panels and leveling out fluctuations in their voltage that could otherwise cause the panels to trip off and stop producing electricity.

As power consumers such as big-box stores start to install more solar panels and energy-storage devices, smart transformers could be key to integrating power from these sources and the grid, Maitra says. Storage systems and distributed energy can allow stores to decide when to draw power from the grid and when to send power back to it, depending on the price of electricity at a given moment. Smart transformers could coordinate this potentially rapid change from buying to selling power, while keeping the grid stable and preventing neighbors' lights from dimming. They could even allow people to buy electricity from their neighbors, Huang says. "If you plug in your electric car at night, you could charge it by negotiating with those in your neighborhood who have excess power," he says. "You actually pay him. You don't pay the utility."

Other kinds of devices can do many of the same things, but the idea of coordinating a large number and variety of consumer-owned devices makes utilities nervous about their ability to keep the grid stable. The new transformers would simplify the system and be utility-owned, making it easier for grid operators to keep the lights on, Maitra says.

Another potential benefit of smart transformers—or what the Electric Power Research Institute is starting to call smart-grid interfaces—is saving energy. For one thing, they can set the voltage of electricity at any given time so that it is at the minimum level appliances need to perform properly. One recent study suggested that doing this could reduce power consumption in the United States by up to 3 percent, which is equivalent to several times as much power as is now generated by all solar panels in the U.S. Even larger energy savings could be seen if smart transformers supplied DC power rather than AC to servers in data centers. Ordinarily, the servers convert the AC to DC themselves—and they do it inefficiently. (Other inefficient conversions, too, are involved in the uninterruptable power supply.) A recent demonstration of such a system by Duke Energy, a large utility company, and the Electric Power Research Institute found that supplying DC could cut power consumption at data centers by about 15 percent.

The SMH reports that Sydney's heatwave (which has been inducing a lot of lethargy here at Peak Energy headquarters) prompted record power consumption in NSW this week - Third day of heat is the one to beware of. At least we aren't about to be deluged by a flood or trashed by a cyclone, unlike our friends in Queensland.

The weather also pushed electricity consumption to a record level of 14,744 megawatts yesterday. This exceeded the previous summer peak of 14,101MW reached on February 6, 2009, and the state's all-time record of 14,289MW, which occurred during the winter of 2008. The increased use of airconditioners has pushed summer usage to new highs.

Given that building peak generation capacity and the associated transmission infrastructure is responsible for a significant slice of our rapidly rising power bills, you'd think some effort would be out into finding ways to reduce the peak (or follow the load locally by encouraging more solar PV) via demand management. The Climate Spectator has a few words to say about this - The easy way to cut power bills.

Energy highways don’t do pedestrian crossings, roundabouts or traffic lights – what the consumer wants, it gets. So, when they all want it at the same time, the energy market needs a Sydney Harbour bridge the equivalent of 50 lanes wide (actually, pick your own number, but it’s a lot) that will then remain unused for the rest of the year.

All of this costs a lot of money, and it’s the consumer who pays for it. The Australian energy regulator late last year estimated that 10 per cent of the country’s transmission infrastructure – assets worth some $3.5 billion – gets used for less than 1 per cent of the year. The rest of the time it sits idle. Not that this greatly upsets the infrastructure providers in the Australian energy market – the more poles they build and wires they hang, the more money they get. ...

The biggest challenge is how to manage the growth in peak demand, which is growing at a phenomenally faster rate than baseload power. It will come as something of a shock to most consumers that their soaring power bills are not the fault of green energy subsidies, but mostly because of the neighbour’s newly installed air conditioning unit. Or their own.

The conventional view of how to solve this problem has been to implement some sort of congestion tax, to try and reduce the need for a 50 lane bridge across the harbour to a 40 lane, or at least make it really expensive. The inevitable rollout of smart meters in coming years will allow for time-of-use billing. But is it fair?

Two economists working for AGL Energy suggest not, arguing that it disadvantages businesses and the less wealthy – why should these people, they ask, be subject to higher energy prices and cross-subsidise others who decide to switch on their air conditioners all at once?

The AGL economists suggest a more complex billing system that would calculate tariffs not just on the time of use, but the change in use. This protects people who have more-or-less constant usage from the worst price spikes, while imposing greater costs on those who ramp up demand at peak periods because they are switching on air conditioners or other appliances. It sounds immensely complicated, but not beyond the bounds of smart meters, because they are, well, smart. Most of all, smart meters will allow consumers, and producers, to change the way they think about pricing. The days of low-cost energy are over, and they are not coming back.

In the meantime, if you’re struggling through the heat wave and your neighbours switch on the air conditioning, you might as well go round and ask to join them in the cool. After all, you’re paying for it.

The AGL paper referred to above can be found here - A New Approach To Congestion Pricing (pdf).

This paper was the subject of an article in the Climate Spectator last year - Australia's power paradox.

Australians are about to pay the price of cheap energy.

A landmark report by a team of analysts from AGL Energy suggests cheap energy and soaring incomes has lured Australians into larger homes with massive increases household appliances, particularly air conditioners. Now they are exposed to a looming price shock that could send retail energy prices more than doubling in the next five years, sending many homes into “fuel poverty.”

The AGL team led by economist Paul Simshauser identifies four primary causes for surging energy prices. The first is Australia’s great wealth of energy resources, which have historically been sold to energy utilities at a margin above extraction cost, but are now being developed at such scale for export that they have a potential to link with global energy indices and potentially cause a fuel cost shock in the domestic market.

This has already occurred in WA, where domestic gas prices are linked with the export price. AGL says that with a dozen new major gas plants planned in eastern Australia, most of it on the export market, a similar scenario could have a profound impact on energy costs.

The second cause is the rising cost of power plants, which has surged over the past decade, and is now being worsened by the higher cost of capital following the global financial crisis.

Thirdly, network infrastructure is now being forced to expand at record rates to keep pace with rapidly rising peak loads caused mostly by domestic energy use.

The move to lower emission technology is also forcing a shift from coal to gas, and to the increased use of high-cost renewable energy sources, although the AGL report says the impact of climate change and renewable energy policies on electricity prices is minor relative to these other drivers.

AGL has produced the report to argue for a range of policy measures. This includes rebating the estimated $1 billion-plus windfall in GST collections from rising energy prices to needy households, and to encourage the purchase of more efficient appliances by granting special credit policies to low income families.

It also wants prices to be deregulated, allowing for time-of-use tariff structures and the introduction of smart meters – not just so that people can view the the rate and cost of their own usage, but to allow demand management that will help shift consumption away from the peak load times that are adding to overall costs.

“The paradox here is, of course, that rising wealth has actually caused the pre-conditions for fuel poverty,” the report notes.

“In many respects, it’s as if consumers in NSW and QLD have historically been provided with a mispriced illicit electricity drug for long enough to establish a chronic addiction, at which point the price will progressively more than double.”

The report said the overwhelming majority of households will readily adjust their budgets to incorporate rising energy costs, as they are not unusual by global standards. But lower income households would face energy bills that could equate to 10 per cent or more of their household budgets. It estimates more than 340,000 households in NSW and Queensland alone could be tipped into “fuel poverty” – the “boomerang paradox” as AGL calls it.

The report said electricity prices in NSW and QLD have the potential to rise from about $130/MWh in fiscal 2008 to $255/MWh in fiscal 2015. Those prices soared above $300/MWh in its worst case scenario. It could not find a single element in the electricity cost stack that was not increasing at a rate faster than prevailing inflation expectations.

But one of the most material, although least certain, cost shocks could come from the upstream coal seam gas industry and the development of LNG terminals in Queensland. If this causes a link to the oil price, then the cost of existing CSG contracts will be more than doubled when they mature and are replaced with new ones.

And as new generating plant is installed in NSW and Queensland, then the long range marginal cost of baseload gas turbines will set the wholesale market prices rather than coal. In its most simplistic terms, the report said, whole-of-system average cost will rise from the coal-based $44/MWh in fiscal 2008 to a gas-based $71/MWh in fiscal 2015, or up to $98/MWh in a high gas price scenario. When the extremely low load factor of households is taken into account, these numbers ramp up to $100 - $130/MWh, excluding carbon taxation. “Importantly, for the Federal Government, their proposed CPRS and RET are not the cause of fuel poverty.”

Technology Review has a look at one component of the smart grid that should be moving slower than the others: smart appliances - CES: Smart Grid, Smarter Home.

It's been quite a while since appliances had any prominence at a high tech show: images of women immaculately dressed in evening gowns while demonstrating the magic of microwave oven technology at the 1964 World's Fair spring to mind. When LG discussed its new technology for fridges and washing machines alongside its smartphones and Internet-enabled TVs at its press conference on Wednesday, there were actually some sniggers from the audience. But after many years of producing essentially commodity products, appliance manufacturers are gearing up for a rejuvenated market as electrical utilities begin to roll out smart meters and homeowners are encouraged to install or upgrade to appliances that can communicate with these meters.

The ability to communicate with the meter means that these appliances can adjust their behavior as the price of electricity varies due to demand: for example, a fridge might postpone its automatic defrost cycle to an off-peak time, or a dish washer might suggest setting a delay of a couple of hours before washing its load (in the latter case, the user would have the option to override the machine's recommendation if they needed clean plates sooner rather than later.)

General Electric has developed a complete suite of smart appliances, including a fridge, dish washer, electric oven, clothes washer, dryer, and hot water heater that all have Zigbee radios for communicating either directly with a smart meter or with the company's Nucleus Energy Manager. The latter is plugged into a spare power socket. It uses Zigbee to talk with the smart meter, appliances, and any electric vehicle you might own, and communicates with users via a PC or smartphone interface over WiFi. It lets users see usage and price data, and program some parameters, such as at what electricity price point or battery charge status they would like to suspend vehicle charging (for example, if their car is 90 percent charged, they might want to stop charging at peak times, but if the battery is tapped out they probably would like to charge regardless of the price.) The water heater is already on the market, and the other appliances will be available to home owners in 2011 through utilities; mass market release is scheduled for 2012.

As the rollout of the smart gird, and therefore the value of smart meter-enabled appliances, is largely in the hands of utilities, some manufacturers, like Kenmore, are holding off on including smart grid functionality into their products, but they are already designing for it. When the smart grid gathers more momentum they expect to be able to quickly drop in the required hardware into their lines of appliances.

Earth2tech has a look at some of the reasons why there has been significant resistance to smart meter rollouts - Why the Smart Meter Backlash Story Isn’t Going Away.

This story seriously won’t go away. And here’s why:

1. People don’t like PG&E. PG&E has a long and contentious relationship with California residents. The utility previously backed the losing Prop 16, which would have basically stopped local governments from getting into the power business. There was that whole gas line fire disaster in San Bruno in September, and the utility took months to initially respond with an apology for the first smart meter complaints that emerged. PG&E couldn’t have done a worse job at outreach to date. Basically anything PG&E does at this point is going to be looked at with a skeptical eye. Bummer.

2. Hard times. As the sergeant put it to the New York Times, budgets are tight everywhere right now and anything that’s giving the impression of unfairly costing consumers money is going to face anger, and apparently, a lot of it. This might not happen to such a large extent if wallets weren’t so tight.

3. Technology is confusing: People generally don’t understand how smart meters work. If you have a Wi-Fi router in your home, a cell phone in your pocket, and a GPS device in your car, yet you’re worried about health concerns of your smart meter, then you don’t understand smart meter technology.

4. Digital, networked technology can be scary. As I’ve written at length, adding a network connection and software to a device has, throughout history, tended to make people nervous. Whether it’s a backlash to computerized voting, or online and mobile banking, the digitization of the power grid will face the same uncertainty.

5. It’s getting hot in here. NASA reported that January through September were the hottest on record. The hotter it is, the more air conditioning people use in their homes, and the more they spend on their monthly utility bills. So as the first wave of smart meters is being installed (partly to help fight climate change), the climate has delivered record hot temperatures that are likely boosting a lot of bills.

6. Little innovation, little change. The power industry has seen little innovation over the past century, which is why greentech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are so eager to build companies in this industry. As a result, utility consumers are used to a routine, never-changing relationship with the utility, and aren’t used to any type of change, period.

7. What do I get? Compare a smart meter installation to the installation of your new cable connection. Working with the cable company is really annoying; they seem to take forever; their customer service lines are abysmal; yet at the end of the irritating journey, you have an Internet connection that brings you all your favorite web content. After you get your smart meter, what do you get? Oh, the ability to cut down on your energy consumption. Not so fun.

The New York Times has an article on some examples of the backlash - ‘Smart’ Meters Draw Complaints of Inaccuracy.

Over the last year, as utilities around the country have installed an estimated two million of the new digital meters, power companies have received plenty of complaints — and in some states have been hit by class-action lawsuits — most of them from consumers saying the smart meters are overstating their electrical usage.

This is not the smooth rollout envisioned last year, when the Obama administration included money for utilities to install smart meters as part of a $3.4 billion injection of federal stimulus spending to modernize the nation’s power grid. By 2020, there could be as many as 65 million smart meters, by various makers, installed in this country, according to one estimate.

Using digital technology and computer networking, smart meters can transmit real-time data that is supposed to enable utilities to conserve electricity and better allocate power during parts of the day when overall demand is high. Utilities can also then vary the price for power, by time of day or time of year, based on when it is being used; some are already offering this option to customers.

Meanwhile, for customers with the right training and additional equipment, the meters can give households a much more detailed picture of the amount of electricity they are using, down to individual appliances. That, in theory, can help people reduce their electric bills and become greener citizens.

But because of faulty technology in some cases, and more often through general shortcomings in consumer education and customer-service support by many utilities, smart meters are leaving many customers dumbfounded.

In Maryland earlier this year, state regulators, aware of the discontent around the country, temporarily blocked a utility’s smart-meter proposal, citing inadequate planning and the potential cost to consumers.

In California, Michael Kelly, a lawyer handling a class-action suit against the state’s dominant utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, over billing disputes, said the problems probably had less to do with faulty devices and more to do with a hasty rollout. Old billing systems were merged with the new smart-meter technology, he said, too frequently resulting in erroneous charges.

“We’re just saying we want an evaluation done and that we want anyone who was overcharged to get their money back,” Mr. Kelly said.

A state-ordered analysis by the independent research firm Structure Consulting Group, released in September, agreed with the utility’s assertion that its new meters were accurate for the most part. The study also supported its conclusion that most of the complaints could be traced to a heat wave, changes in personal behavior or old meters that were actually malfunctioning and undercharging before the new ones were installed.

But the Structure report also said the utility had done a poor job of educating consumers and addressing their concerns. In basic terms, the smart digital meters are simply replacing the old analog meters, with their inscrutable dials and counters, found on the sides of homes all over America. But unlike those “dumb” devices, which are often read once a month by utility employees going house to house on foot, the digital meters can provide utilities with remote, real-time measurements of kilowatt-hours being used.

A recent analysis by the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute, a utility-financed research organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., estimated that creating an intelligent electricity grid of this sort in the United States could reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent annually by 2030. Nationally, that could mean annual savings of roughly $20.4 billion for utilities and their customers, according to the institute.

Grist has some commentary on the Earth2Tech and New York Times articles - Understanding the smart meter backlash.

David's been writing lately about the intersection of technology and human habits and culture, arguing that energy is a behavioral challenge as much as a technological one. There's a prime of example of how these things collide -- and why climate hawks should pay attention -- in the backlash against smart meters in California.

The New York Times is the latest to cover the trend of residents responding in outrage when utilities install smart meters -- home-energy computers that provide detailed information on what appliances you're using, and when. They're a necessary element in building a clean-energy grid that relies on wind and solar power, feeds electric cars, and supports greener dishwashers and other appliances (here's a good backgrounder).

California utility PG&E has been a national leader in rolling out the devices. It's also faced the strongest revolt. ...

Behavioral researcher Doug McKenzie-Mohr suggests there's no silver bullet to getting people to adopt new sustainable behaviors. It requires patience, careful communication, carefully designed pilot programs, and research into what mental associations new concepts may trigger (that's why we get home-energy "reviews" or "check-ups" instead of "audits").

Mailing out brochures isn't going to put everyone's concerns to rest, because their worries are less about information than about adjusting to change.

There's reason to think that privacy fears about the smart grid aren't going to be "solved" any quicker than the question of internet privacy will be resolved (the grid is often called the internet for energy). The question will persist, just as the question of internet privacy has.

Fehrenbacher's whole story at Earth2Tech, "Why the Smart Meter Backlash Story Isn't Going Away," runs through a list of ominous reasons why the dilemma will stick around. It's worth reading.

There are two ways to think about the PR challenge of smart meter going forward, one cheery and one gloomy. Global warming speech-givers are fond of saying that our choice is not between sustainability and the status quo; it's between sustainability and Detroit/Mogadishu/Pakistani floods (pick your social-collapse metaphor). In the same vein, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers says our choice is between a wired clean-energy network and utility rates that will rise 20 to 40 percent in the coming decades to replace aging power plants. The status quo isn't an option -- that's the gloomy conclusion.

For the other perspective, I'm cribbing from David's recent post comparing China's massive top-down energy planning and a decentralized American alternative:

Among other infantilizing features of modern American life is the fact that we are passive, thoughtless consumers of energy, forever suckling at a far-away teat, whether it's foreign oil producers or politically connected corporate behemoths. We send money out of our communities; someone sends power in. We are as dependent as sheep.

One step toward regaining our sense of civic engagement and self-determination would be to widely distribute the means of making and managing energy, to empower bottom-up rather than top-down innovation. Our communities can never truly govern themselves if they have no control over their own power. Let China have the Three Gorges Dam. Let's show the world, again, that democracy can work.

Smart meters can help Americans become not just consumers but energy managers and producers (through, say, rooftop solar panels). If you buy this perspective, adding info-tech to your home's energy system isn't disempowering at all. It's an expression of democracy. That's a bit more hopeful.

The Australian has a report on Energy Australia's smart grid progress in NSW - 15,000 smart homes planned for NSW.

POWER company EnergyAustralia will rely on Ericsson technology to deliver the first national smart grid, in a deal worth up to $12 million.

Ericsson will provide equipment, software and services as EnergyAustralia turns 15,000 NSW households into smart homes.

The utility will conduct a privacy impact assessment to ease concerns that information held on smart meters could be hijacked by thieves and direct marketing companies.

Internet giant Google has been in hot water for inadvertently accessing private data from its Street View vehicles as they travelled around Australia and other countries collecting mapping information.

Homes in Newcastle, Scone, Newington, Sydney CBD and Ku-ring-gai will rely on fourth-generation wireless communications network that will use Wimax and long-term evolution (LTE) platforms.

Wimax and LTE will be used to transmit data between 200 major substations, and 12,000 smart sensors and 3000 mobile devices at 150 sites.

The utility will be able to pinpoint faults in its network and provide real-time alerts to customers on power use.

Ultimately, this could lead to lower energy consumption in homes, especially in an era of spiralling power costs.

EnergyAustralia has rolled out 800km of fibre-optic cable. The "last mile" of its network will rely on 4G technologies.

The company is rolling out the Wimax network, and LTE trials at 15 sites will begin next year, said Adrian Clark, the manager of EnergyAustralia's intelligent networks.