Recently in Smart grid Category

Pacific Gas and Electric is the classic, longtime "clean" utility -- almost no pollutant emissions. It just this week pulled out of the US Chamber of Commerce because of the chamber's tough skepticism about the need to regulate carbon emissions. But clearly, CEO Peter Darbee doesn't see company cleanness as any guarantee of future viability of a power utility.

Speaking at the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch utility conference in New York Tuesday, Darbee said climate change and renewable energy mandates are not the big challenges for the power industry. Instead, our correspondent Ethan Howland reports, he said distributed energy and smart meters present the much bigger threat to a business's way of life.

The smart grid may be only in the underachiever phase for longer than some might be thinking, even though the Obama administration is putting billions toward it, and promising jobs and savings in connection with it.

Patrick Gallagher, deputy director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday that "there is a bit of a jam right now" in figuring out which standards are most urgent to move on, and he said the organization hoped to have initial drafts of roadmaps ready this summer. Initial drafts of roadmaps.