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By Doug Peeples

SGN News Editor

The utility industry wanted more data, and now it's available in quantities that may not have been foreseen. What are the best ways of managing all that data, interpreting it and getting the most value? Smart grid professionals offered thoughts on how to do it right and get the business intelligence to succeed in the next decade.

Jeremy Eaton, Honeywell Smart Grid Solutions VP and general manager, provided a succinct summary of the issue: "In recent years, Honeywell has seen the widespread deployment of smart meters and a corresponding increase in access to granular energy use data. At the same time, the majority of homes and businesses in the United States (and beyond) have Wi-Fi connections, and want remote access to information through smartphones and other mobile devices.  As a result, smart grid deployments will need to be tightly integrated as utilities look for combined hardware and software solutions that deliver energy data — and coaching — in a seamless manner."

Distributed intelligence

Echelon CEO Ron Sege pointed to distributed intelligence, recognizing it as a significant trend in smart grid technology because it offers a quicker and much more efficient way to manage and use data. In his straight-to-the-point assessment, he says: "Now, the Internet collects data from the grid and ships it off to a central data center for processing. But for real-time control systems, it doesn't work to transport all that data back to the center, process it there, and then send the result back to the edge.

"Instead, we need to collect data at the edge, analyze it there, decide what's important and what's not, and send back to the enter only the exceptions. Better yet, take action locally based on that data. This kind of distributed intelligence is the direction the grid will go."

And while Derek Porter, EVP for Product Management and Strategy at Ventyx, was not speaking directly to data in this comment on coming trends in smart grid technology development he may as well have been.

"A key focus for smart grid technology over the next 10 years will be on eliminating bottlenecks, for example caused by remaining manual processes and paper-based systems. Forward-thinking vendors will directly address the limitations of current point solutions where utilities must internally adjust their business processes by offering end-to-end solutions that enable smart grid technologies."

More from SGN's The Next 10 Years series…

The Next 10 Years: Give it up for integrated systems

Why hurdles to DG, DR and storage will prove worth jumping

The Next 10 Years according to Cisco CEO John Chambers

Getting standards down so we can move on to the good stuff

What we can (and can't) expect from regulators and policymakers

Maybe customer engagement isn't so dang important

Empowered "digital natives" become a force to reckon with

Silver Spring exec insists we need to go faster

Where we've come from (and how it shapes where we'll go next)