At ConnectivityWeek, some bright, visionary folks are talking about how to better deliver more awareness and more control to that electricity customer. How successful they are and how that customer responds may very well determine the longterm effects of the growing energy crunch and maybe even the ultimate impact of global climate change.

How do these folks think they’re doing so far? ConnectivityWeek is in the heart of Silicon Valley and a lot of these people come from the Information Technology (IT) world, so they’re trying to decide whether to call their progress Connectivity 1.5 or Connectivity 2.0. The general inclination seems to be toward 1.5, with momentum. A lot of collaboration and research is still necessary to get to the second generation of Smart Grid technology.

In Demand Response (DR), a major part of Smart Grid development, the focus is mostly about 2 major areas: (1) Developing more capabilities for DR systems and (2) getting customers involved. In other words, it’s tracking the larger discussion about the Smart Grid. Makes sense - DR is the roots of Smart Grid.

With burgeoning technology, DR systems can respond to peaking electricity demand by talking with more and more precision to thermostats and heating/cooling systems. Some utility companies have experimental programs that can talk to some DR systems. The thinkers in the field are calling for more collaboration. More collaboration. More collaboration. Large-scale impacts on energy consumption at times of high demand can’t happen until even the most ingenious proprietary technology offers a standardized, collaborative pathway by which the utilities and the consuming systems can interact.

Brock LaPorte, SunPower Corp.: “There are many different industries that need to come together to make all this data-driven energy distribution happen in the coming years and there’s a huge amount of investment…they’re estimating something like $11 trillion of energy infrastrucutrue over the next twenty-five years…”

With the new generation of IT tools becoming available, customers could give controllers at utilities the ability to vary all sorts of smaller things like hot water heaters, swimming pool pumps and entertainment center switches. (The customers retain override controllers.) Cumulatively, that is where energy waste can be really eliminated.

Steve Widergren, Pacific Northwest National Lab: “We’re hopefully articulating a plan for the future that incorporates all the designs of the Smart Grid but we can’t do it alone and so we really need that participation from the vendor community, from the standards bodies, from the manufacturers…We’ve talked about Smart Grid now for many, many years but frankly we are on the cusp of this enormous implementation cycle that we haven’t witnessed in the past…a wave of new technology is about to arrive…”