Pioneering utilities have been testing and building various components of the Smart Grid for some time now. That's good news if you're just getting started. You can save time and money by taking advantage of the pioneers' "lessons learned" highlighted in this section.
Results: 98 results found. You are on page 1 of 4 pages.
The communications network is the foundation of a smart grid. Get the network right and you can leverage it for years. Get it wrong and you may hit a performance ceiling. Recently, engineers from Qualcomm studied more than 1,500 smart grid use cases to determine the five most crucial communications issues. Then they tested different technologies against eight different applications (including meter reading, outage management and distribution automation). Click to learn more about the five key issues, about how cellular stacks up and where to get the test results.
There was a lot going on in the smart grid world in 2011: major developments and advances, successes and failures, rising and falling trends, and a lot in between. But some of those stories seem to go on and on and on. Take a look at our roundup of the year's stories that just won't end.
This week security expert Andy Bochman shares a Q&A with PJM Interconnection CEO Terry Boston. Find out what he had to say about the current state of cyber security and why Andy found his remarks so refreshing - and a good place to start the new year.
Glendale Water & Power already has one of the highest-ranked smart grids in the country. So what's next? The California utility is integrating all functions of its electric and water services. Click inside to learn about steps GWP is taking to enhance customer service, efficiency and reliability.
Voters in Boulder, Colorado told city officials – by a very narrow margin – that they want their own electric utility. It's the latest installment in the extremely complicated saga of the city's crumbling relationship with Xcel Energy. Click inside for SGN Chief Analyst Jesse Berst's take on this latest development from SmartGridCity.
In what may be the most useful study we've seen in a long time, the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative has identified best practices for smart grid consumer engagement based on real-world findings from 20 mature AMI projects around the country. Trust us; you won't want to miss this.
Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity is a polarizing project. Many see it as a pathbreaking demonstration that proved out some of the most important smart grid theories. Yet others believe it has been a massive failure. What's the truth? That's our Tuesday Topic this week. Please join the discussion.
Click inside for video replays and presentation materials from our Aug. 24, 2011 webinar on top lessons learned from real-world smart meter deployments featuring experts from Baltimore Gas & Electric and Accenture.
Smart grid messaging expert Judith Schwartz provides valuable lessons smart grid stakeholders should take to heart from the man considered by many to be the greatest technology product visionary ever: Steve Jobs. Click inside for her insights on how those lessons can be applied in today's smart grid environment.
Our resident smart grid insider Jesse Berst sat down with the man responsible for producing public "report cards" for Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity and Duke Energy's smart grid Ohio project. He gleaned three important trends plus insights into the best places to find true value (the kind of value that assuages and impresses regulators). Click inside to read all about it.
This case study highlights Telvent's soluton for the Eugene (Oregon) Water and Electric Board, which sought an ESRI-based mapping solution that would serve both its water and electric GIS needs, and its outage management requirements. Due to increased utility costs for licensing, maintenance and use of its two legacy GIS applications, technology convergence became a central goal for the new system.
Give your summer brain a back-to-reality kick start with five compelling reads hand-picked by SGN Chief Analyst Jesse Berst. A book, white papers and even a personal exit interview with one of the industry's top utility bosses are all just a click away.
SGN Chief Analyst Jesse Berst whets your appetite for our upcoming August 24 webinar on the top 10 lessons learned in smart meter deployments in these interviews with top experts in the field. If you're even thinking about a smart meter deployment, it's essential reading.
The 22-story Wachovia Bank in Tampa, Florida had a building management system that had not kept pace with the today’s energy-intensive needs and complex indoor environmental concerns. This KMC Controls case study highlights the assessment and retrofit of the bank's existing computer-controlled building automation system.
This catalogue of smart grid projects in Europe is based on a review of 219 projects, accounting for a total investment of about €5.5 billion. The report by the European Commission Joint Research Centre showcases how smart grids can help integrate more renewables, accommodate electric vehicles, give more control to consumers over their energy consumption, avoid blackouts and restore power quickly when outages occur.
As utilities move to integrate information technology and operational technology, they are finding the journey is not so easy. Data privacy and security hurdles. Impacts to legacy systems. New skill sets to teach ... the list goes on. Jesse Berst has been talking with experts from Duke and Accenture about these challenges; we think you'll be interested in what he's learned.
This ABB case study looks at automation systems as a key tool in the more efficient management of buildings, spotlighting specific technologies utilitized in an upgrade of the Regione Molise building in Italy and the savings incurred.
Smart grid technologies promise a wealth of benefits but also raise important personal privacy issues. As a result, stakeholders are assessing how to balance protecting consumers’ privacy expectations and control over the dissemination of personally identifiable information with the need of utilities and authorized third parties to have access to this data. This article, from Dow Lohnes PLLC attorney Michael Pryor, discusses the proposal to model smart grid privacy and data dissemination on the protections afforded to customer proprietary network information ("CPNI") generated by users of telecommunications services as set forth in the Communications Act and the FCC.
A large multi-national movie theater chain called upon its energy
management provider, Novar, to drive more energy savings and
reduce time-consuming work for theater managers. This case study details what was done and the results achieved.
Bryn Mawr, a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, provides an example of how effective use of demand response (DR) can deliver significant energy and cost savings, even at an institution where the average age of the buildings is over 88 years.
This presentation details Blue Grass Energy's voltage optimization project - an effort to improve power factor, reduce technical losses and reduce energy consumption through voltage reduction via centralized Volt/VAR control and dynamic voltage optimization.
The National Action Plan Coalition has taken a different approach in its new case study on the smart grid and demand response. Rather than interpreting a horde of numbers, the coalition mined the recently-completed PowerCentsDC smart meter and DR pilot program in the District of Columbia for what it says smart grid practitioners, policy makers and other stakeholders really want: current information on best practices and the lessons to be learned from the project.
Arizona-based Westcor owns some of the largest shopping malls in the United States. This video case study highlights some of the impact EnerNOC demand response solutions has had on Westcor's business.
A handful of community wind projects built over the past year have been financed via new and creative structures that push the envelope of wind project finance in the U.S. This document from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab provides five case studies that highlight this financial innovation - and opportunity.
Energinet.dk and the Danish Energy Association analysed the issue of grid development in Denmark in the years ahead as electricity generation becomes increasingly derived from renewable energy sources, as consumers change their oil-fired burners for electric heat pumps and start to replace their petrol-powered vehicles with electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles. The economic analysis in this joint report concludes that an intelligent power system – a Smart Grid – is the most effective strategy for developing the power system.
Natural gas is getting so cheap that it may become cheaper and faster to slap up a gas-fired peaking plant than to implement a complicated demand response or renewable project - two of the biggest drivers of a smart grid. Yikes! Will natural gas alternatives make the smart grid too expensive by comparison? That's this week's Tuesday Topic in our discussion forum. Please join in.
Twitter
Facebook
Linkedin
RSS
