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Smart Grid Backlash: How to Put an End to Consumer Resistance By Guest Editorial Feb 16, 2010 - 4:21:59 PM
If you read our recent article about consumer blowback, then you know that consumer resistance is one of the Smart Grid's biggest dangers. IEEE member and PhD candidate Tim Kostyk has stopped by to propose a solution -- namely, to bake social and cultural considerations into our requirements planning. Take a look at his ideas, and then use the comment form at the bottom to tell us if he got it right. By Tim Kostyk
We are now designing a Smart Grid which will take decades to build and implement and cost trillions of dollars. This means now, more so than any other time in our history, we have the time to get things right and design a grid that will propel our cultural and society into the future. Can we even imagine designing an electrical grid for the future that will be used by 300 million or more Americans and may even be a model for the world without looking at both the cultural and societal impacts as primary requirements of design?
The most widely accepted vision of the future Smart Grid is that of an electrical grid that is highly automated, managed, controlled and optimized by Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). There is one catch in this description; the grid of the future will not be the existing grid that is ICT-enabled. There will be fundamental differences to its design which will change the way we live our lives and interact socially and culturally.
These social and cultural considerations include topics like privacy and equity to name just two. Sadly enough technology designs and especially ICT designs typically fail to incorporate social and cultural view and viewpoints as critical requirements. This is not a new phenomenon. The technological landscape is cluttered with the remains of huge IT projects which either failed outright, or cost orders of magnitudes higher than originally estimated due directly to the inability of organizations to take into account the impact to the most important stakeholders, the people impacted by the design (not just the perceived users).
We need to start asking social and cultural impact questions like:
These kinds of questions can be incorporated as requirements and be used to extend our existing business and technical architectures from which we can map and build thoughtful technology designs that will be robust and flexible.
Tim Kostyk is a member of Arizona State University’s Human and Social Dimensions of Science & Technology PhD Program. He is a TOGAF 9 Certified Enterprise Architect and trainer and sits on the IEEE Power and Engineering Society Smart Grid Planning Committee as well as participates in the IEEE Smart Grid p2030 Standards Workgroup. Email the author. . You might also be interested in …
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Smart Grid Newsletter (SGN) is the insider's guide to the Smart Grid revolution. It consists of a FREE bi-monthly email summary, along with a companion Web site that contains the full stories and other helpful materials. Benefits of subscribing: SGN is the only central source for all of the news, trends, research and marketplace information relevant to grid automation. In it, you will read about cutting edge technologies; successful pioneers and how they got ahead; regulatory changes that could unleash new markets; the latest research; and new opportunities for sales of grid-related products and services. © Copyright 2008 SmartGridNews.com |