Tim McElligott Blog: Smart People, Smart Money, Smart Grid

Sure, people are smart. Look at all we have done to manipulate the resources of our world to create tremendous convenience and entertainment for ourselves. Look at the medical breakthroughs, the engineering feats. Look how we have leapt beyond the boundaries of limb-powered modality and guttural communications. Look at the secrets to nature we have unlocked.

Even our networks are smart. The Intelligent Network was only the beginning. And the Internet is still a toddler in learning all it can do. Now we have the Smart Grid. And the first impression we get in our heads of the smart grid is similar to the IN, a network with built-in intelligence that can help us be more efficient in our use of network resources and empower us to exercise more control over how we use services.

But the "smart" in Smart Grid goes beyond its ability to monitor, measure and react to new levels of use and preferences and includes the choice to deploy it at all. For there is always a choice. But the choice not to build and deploy the Smart Grid isn’t a very smart one. The choice is really only about how aggressively to build. And the smart money says that if the economy holds out, the Smart Grid may make the transition to broadband look like a snail’s race.

We all know that among all the great things we have built as arguably the smartest beings on the planet, is the means to destroy ourselves, whether that is through the slow and steady fouling of our home planet or the instant nuclear destruction of it. The Smart Grid doesn’t solve either of those problems, but whether you are from the Bill McKibben school of climate and environmental science that says the window to save ourselves from climatic disaster has already closed or from the James Inhofe (R-Okla.) school of denialism that compares the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo, the Smart Grid can be a beacon both symbolically and practically for the kind of change we need to survive and thrive. The Smart Grid need not be politicized. It stands alone on business grounds, on cost management grounds, on the grounds of simple conservation of resources. All the rest that it can do will be bonuses. If we get caught up in debating them the way we do on the bigger issue of climate change or the head-shaking debate over evolution, we all lose.

The following are two quotes that didn’t make it into the cover story of the upcoming July issue of B/OSS on the Smart Grid. I left them out because I wanted to focus the article on the business benefits, challenges and opportunities for telecom service providers in this effort. I was satisfied knowing for myself that behind the necessary business drivers are also strong, humanistic well-informed motivations moving forward with the Smart Grid, but I thought I would share them with you here.

And here they are:

Addressing climate change is a key priority for us. You can call it political, but it’s really a societal priority. The generation of electricity is a major source of carbon emissions. – George Arnold, national coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

We are still in a capitalistic society, but Smart Grid goes beyond the mercantile aspects of it for Verizon. We see Smart Grid helping the environment on several levels. As we become more efficient at producing electricity it reduces the need to build more power plants, some of which will be coal-fired. So we can use this opportunity to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases. We see it as a way to lessen our reliance on foreign oil and fossil fuels in general. The electric vehicle will be part of that, too, so all the power that used to be wasted can be used to power electric vehicles. Verizon is a great consumer of power so using less of it will help both the environment and us. – Rilck Noel, managing director for Verizon’s Global Energy and Utility practice.

We may ultimately destroy ourselves, but the Smart Grid and initiatives like it may at least let us feel like we didn’t go down without a fight.

E-mail me at heyBOSS@vpico.com