2012 to bring more smart grid, less government support

It’s that time of year for annual predictions. CNN’s doing it. The New York Times is doing it. So, why not us at POWERGRID International magazine?

Keeping the concept to our own power industry, what will be on the horizon in 2012?

The obvious choice is: more smart grid. A lot more. That’s a bit of a no-brainer. This ball is rolling, and stopping it will take, as Newton said, a “greater force.” At this time in this industry, there is no force greater than the smart grid momentum. Granted, its growth will be slower now that the government cash tap has been cut down to a trickle, but that growth will continue. Everything about power is going to get smarter, and that’s the way it is.

This leads to a second prediction: Everything’s going to get smarter, but customers are still going to gripe. In the end, humans don’t like change too much. It’s scary. We fear it. It’s one of those things we hate most in life. Heck, we don’t even like it when the grocery store moves our favorite can of creamed corn over an aisle or two. We gripe about it. We grumble. So, smart meters---which are a heck of a lot of new---will continue to be a tough sell in 2012 in a number of areas. We’re gonna gripe about it. We’re gonna grumble. Customer communication (and an open-door policy) will help, but only time will make things more accepted---more a part of the norm and less new. So, I don’t see great mobs of average consumers embracing the smart meter/smart grid concept. They haven’t gotten to that level of acceptance yet. They will, but that will take time. So, utilities will have to practice a little patience.

Jumping off of the “consumers hate change” concept, here’s a third 2012 prediction that may not follow the typical industry fanfare: Electric vehicles (EVs) will be put on a backburner (yes, again). Why do I think this? Well, first, despite a whole lot of media coverage of electric cars, they aren’t selling very well. EVs are selling so poorly that analysts at investment website 24/7 Wall St. labeled the Chevy Volt one of the worst product flops of 2011. Lots of hype trumpeted the Volt’s entrance, but sales in July were a whopping 125 vehicles.

Second, it’s all about consumer acceptance. We can put up charging stations and complete studies on massive EV grid impact, but without the consumer willing to buy that EV, we’re stuck. And EVs are still too “wacky” for the average American. (And too expensive, unpredictable, scary and thought-/time-consuming.) Americans may come around to EVs eventually (as they will with smart meters), but it won’t be in 2012. Will this lag time mean a second death for the electric car? It’s possible, yes, unless the government’s willing to shore up the EVs trade until it becomes capable of standing on its own.

This leads to my fourth and final prediction for 2012, which is just basic writing on the federal wall: The government is going to take a step back in research, support and funding for anything outside of the traditional energy norm. It’s already happened with smart grid in 2011, and smart grids aren’t nearly as scary as intermittent renewable energy or cars that steer away from gas guzzling. So, with those scary areas, there’s going to be next to no movement. All actions will be gone over with a fine-tooth comb, especially after Solyndra’s messy collapse. While support from the government to help develop research and processes is a true American tradition and has brought us awesome stuff like relatively cheap air travel and cell phones, sometimes investments go wrong. In the time of a recession, however, wrong is amplified. Solyndra is now a symbol. This will make the feds a bit cautious in any approach to shore up new and unproven forms of energy from solar to EVs. They’ll be terribly skittish, especially with elections bringing in a spotlight on every penny spent. So, obviously, 2012 will be a time of investment contraction, which doesn’t bode especially well for the renewables side of the power equation since they truly need the support. But, they’re scary and new, not a sure thing. Not a definite. These days, the government is hedging bets.

So, four things in 2012: More smart grid, more cautious consumers having growing pains, more consumer growing pains means fewer EVs on the road, and more government contraction pains means less renewables investment.

What are your predictions for 2012? Send me an email at kathleend@pennwell.com and let me know. We’ll share more next week.

Give the gift of power

As Christmas fast approaches, most of us are in panic mode. We’re shopping the mall; we’re checking out specialty coffee and chocolate stores in our hometowns that most of us would never set foot in outside of the Christmas rush. But, what was once just too darn expensive now seems like an easy gift idea for Aunt Mabel or your second cousin who randomly shows up on gift-giving holidays without warning.

My father does all of his shopping on Amazon.com. He solicits lists every year around Thanksgiving and then hops online on Cyber Monday to complete the whole buying process in one fell swoop. Personally, I find that a little sterile. What’s Christmas without a little hustle and bustle and fighting for the last Frosty cookie jar with some lady in an overwrought sweater in Hobby Lobby one busy Saturday afternoon?

Christmas just isn’t the same without a little sweat equity, without a little mixed martial arts and the throwing of elbows.

But, if you are like my father and want to keep things sterile, I have the perfect gift for your friends with new and shiny electric vehicles (EVs): a vehicle charger.

And, you know what? You can order it from Amazon.

Yes, you can.

This week, GE Energy told the world that Amazon.com will sell GE’s wall-mounted EV charger the WattStation. No worries anymore about finding a charger or having to buy it at the dealership or through your utility. Now, you can pop online and pick one up on Amazon.com.

Noting that this is “just in time for the holidays”---which may be clever marketing or simply an odd accident---GE will gift EV users in both the U.S. and Canada with those WattStations just as soon as you click on the “add to cart” link on Amazon (and pay, of course).

“As demand and interest in the GE WattStation continues to grow, we’re excited to give our customers an easy way to purchase the charger,” said Sergio Corbo, chief marketing officer for GE Energy’s Industrial Solutions business in a release about the Amazon deal. “We believe the product is well-suited to an online purchasing experience.”

Well, OK. I’m not really sure about that one. Buying a DVD online? Sure. Easy-breezy. Buying some headphones, a new nose ring, some paperbacks and maybe a scarf? A-OK. But, a car charger?

Buying a car charger online seems---odd. Sometimes I breeze through the sporting goods equipment on Amazon and think, “Who buys a treadmill online?”

I had a similar reaction to the car charger announcement: “Who buys a car charger online?”

A $10 purchase online? Sure. A $1,000 purchase online? Really? And do you just slap that on your VISA and call it good?

Amazon lists the product features as:
• Easy-to-install mounting brackets,
• a power button allowing zero energy consumption when off, and
• peace of mind (in the form of ground fault protection).

And the description labels the WattStation “the EV charger you've been looking for!”

So far, there’s only one review on the GE WattStation on Amazon’s site. By AaronLephart---who has done no other reviews I can find on the site about anything other than the WattStation---the response is glowing:

I purchased this charger at a retail store long before Amazon carried it. The internals are made with overbuilt componants and are top quality. This same charger would have cost you $3000.00 a year ago, amazing how fast progress is being made. I recommend installing the charger on a dedicated 40amp circuit breaker. The J1772 connector is solid and does'nt feel cheap at all. The electrical wiring they use for the cord is VERY flexible and long. I cant stop looking at the lights on the charger at night. When not in use the charger has a button to take all power from the unit. No vampire power usage here!

Three out of four people found Aaron’s review very useful. Me, I’m still in awe over buying a $1,000 car charger online. I really need to get with the times, I guess.

Just for a rush, I added it to my cart for a second. Then, I opened the cart and immediately deleted before the thought of a grand on my VISA made me faint dead away.

So, I didn’t finish my WattStation charger purchase, though I gave it a whirl. Since I don’t have an EV, it would be a frivolous holiday purchase---much more frivolous than that peppermint bark from Williams Sonoma I’ve been eyeing. For someone with an EV, it could be a luxury holiday surprise, for sure.

One thing that does make my cheap soul happy about a WattStation purchase from Amazon: At least it qualifies for free shipping. (But, not if you want it by Christmas to gift to Aunt Mabel.)

Talking cyber in Phoenix

Security is a constant concern with the smart grid. As our technology grows more intelligent, it also grows more vulnerable. Every point of interconnection to another bit or byte of electronics is a possible intrusion point.

This week at the Grid-Interop conference in Phoenix, experts discussed practical implementations of cybersecurity in a session focused on solutions and practices.

In the session, Russ Silva from Telcordia Technologies noted that utilities are currently deploying millions of intelligent devices, some part of field area networks (FANS). While each intelligent device has a potential spot of vulnerability, the FANs, especially, tend to operate in open and vulnerable areas.

“There’s a lot of technology out there,” he said, adding that there aren’t a lot of vendor options available to keep an eye on FANs, or on the traffic flows and packet exchanges within.

Silva ran through a series of research areas that Telcordia is working on to address the FAN security issue.

Any bit of technology in the field is more vulnerable in all areas of security, including cyber, but the largest security issue at the moment centers around the largest number of implementations---namely smart meters.

Efrain Gonzalez with Southern California Edison---in fact, he’s their lead cybersecurity architect---joined Silva’s discussion with notes from SCE’s Smart Connect project.

“It’s been said that cybersecurity is more of a journey than a destination,” he opened with, detailing that SCE has surpassed 3.7 million meters installed at this point in the project. And, the utility did so by integrating system engineering principles and borrowing items from the defense industry in order to address security issues.

One of the biggest lessons SCE learned from this project was that security must be built into the technology, not “bolted on” as an extra.

In the end, there were a number of lessons involved in the process. Gonzalez revealed that the first meter the utility took to be tested for cybersecurity was broken into “in the first five minutes.”

But, they learned. A lot. And now, the utility has worked up specifications that they will share with utilities vendors and other associations (and require from vendors working with SCE). Based on open standards, the specifications will help promote cybersecurity interoperability, and Gonzalez said the utility hopes to have that set of specifications available for download in 2012.

Mike Ahmadi with consulting firm GraniteKey built on the journey analogy that Gonzalez brought up early in the session, pointing out that journeys can be inconsistent, as air travel is often these days: Security is different at different points in the travel process. Where will you have to remove shoes? At which airport do you have to empty your pockets or take off scarves? Which airport won’t require that?

The cybersecurity journey may be less consistent than air travel, at this point. The industry is juggling oppressive security issues.

“We moved into the idea of implementing the smart grid. Then, security issues snuck in, raining on this parade of ingenuity,” he said.

While focusing on the joys of a smart grid, the issues that those joys create, including cybersecurity, were latecomers. We brought in the smart grid for its positives and are now trying to keep the negatives at bay, but that’s a lag process.

“We’re in an active state of deployment,” Ahmadi added. “But we haven’t come up with any real standards---not just suggestions, but standards, things you have to have.”

Ahmadi noted that baseline standards are needed because some vendors do a better job than others with security issues, harkening back to that inconsistent journey concept.

Ahmadi pointed out that utilities carry a heavier burden with cybersecurity than vendors, as regulators and customers will come to them if something goes wrong, not to the vendor.

Gonzalez supported Ahmadi’s observation about the cybersecurity burden, adding that the industry has been “leveraging the utility” to press standards but that some of the onus needs to be placed with vendors.

In the end, the panelists are hoping to create a more consistent cybersecurity journey for utilities, vendors and customers.

Smart city evolves from concept to product

Amsterdam has a leading example of the smart city ideal: transportation, distribution, utilities, consumers, water sources and renewables working together to create a cleaner, greener urban utopia. They’ve been working on this concept for years, bringing in researchers, utility experts, consultants and even the common man to contribute to the cause.

Over the last few years, other cities---mostly in Europe but also a handful in the Middle East---have been gathering behind the smart city piper, following that tune to its proper end. Of course, no one is quite sure what that proper end will be, but most agree that smart cities are about cooperation and good planning. Cooperation and good planning usually end pretty well.

As the journey progresses, though, every good idea eventually becomes both a catchphrase---like “smart grid”---and a product.

This week, the concept of smart cities has moved past catchphrase to product in my mind.

Schneider Electric and the IT company it recently acquired, Telvent, announced a joint “SmartCity” offering that comes complete with an integrated suite of solutions centered around efficiency, sustainability and ways to make “more livable cities,” according to the press release.

Their specific SmartCity offering combines areas they label “smart grid,” “smart mobility,” “smart water,” “smart public services,” and “smart buildings and homes.” While the grid part looks for inefficiencies over local distribution, the mobility checks in on traffic congestion and electric vehicle integration. While the water side looks to reduce losses, the public services side reviews safety, lighting, healthcare and even admin stuffs. Finally, the suite looks into creating brighter, cleaner, smart buildings which ties it right back to the grid portion of the collection.

Now, this isn’t the first collaborative offering in this arena, but it was the one that struck me as evidence that the smart city train is still on track. Once an idea becomes a serious, sellable product, we’ve moved from “maybe someday” to today.

It’s nice to see a smart city of today, even labeled SmartCity.

I pinged Telvent to know a bit more about their product and whether any utilities are just foaming at the mouth to use it. I got a very lovely---and very quick, thank you---response from Jon Reifschneider over there. He tells me there were a lot of people involved in planning their SmartCity suite, including utilities, city governments and urban planners.

He went on to comment that they’re seeing a lot of “activity currently in Brazil in preparation for the major events there (World Cup and Olympics) and, of course, in China, where new cities are being built and current cities enlarged at an incredible pace.”

Reifschneider also noted activity in the U.S. and Europe, with the U.S. focus on energy management and led by utilities.

“One particular example of a smart city initiative we have implemented very closely with a utility is the Malaga Smart City in Malaga, Spain with Endesa, and we are working with them to explore projects in additional cities,” he added.

Both he and the company see smart cities as the evolution of smart grid, which I cannot deny. It does seem that change is in the works. The final result of this smart city journey may be the bundling of smart grids into the smart city overall product, making interconnections and cooperation the most key element.

And, if that happens, the “smart grid” catchphrase may go the way of “Xerox.” When’s the last time you used that catchphrase---based on a company---to say you’re making copies?

Technology, it does one thing well: evolve.