Google's splashy entry into the smart grid space (not to be completed until later this year, actually) puts a new dimension to a field where companies have been laboring pretty obscurely for a long time. Taking the software directly to the people, for free, could make a big difference in power-consumption behavior.
"It moves the national public awareness" of smart grid technologies," Edison Electric Institute spokesman Ed Legge said this week. Still, ramifications for the smart grid industry are not apparent yet; some could be squeezed out.
The Google PowerMeter may not be that different from plenty of other products available today, our colleague Tom Tiernan reports, and "it's not as if an announcement by one company will prevent other companies from participating," one industry source said. And Google's news "will certainly be something that lifts the industry and helps build awareness," according to Dan Delurey, executive director of the Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition.
But Lynne Kiesling, who always challenges the brain at knowledgeproblem.com, puts the question: Does Google's product really step into a new zone? It's welcome, she says, but she wonders:
Is your device transactive? Can it be programmed to respond autonomously to price signals? Can it be programmed to respond to some other type of communication that the consumer can receive under his/her contract with his/her retailer? Can the consumer access the device remotely to change its settings?
Kiesling's transactive test is here.
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