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By Jesse Berst

From our early coverage of previous Schneider smart grid-related acquisitions and Schneider's smart grid demand response vision, you know that the company has long intended to "plug into" the smart grid via its many adjacent product lines. With its just-announced acquisition of Telvent, Schneider now steps over the line into the smart grid itself.

Telvent has been one of the smart grid's under-appreciated gems. It has a wide product range, including DMS (distribution management systems), OMS (outage management systems), SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition), MDM (meter data management), and GIS (geographical information systems).   Just yesterday I was having lunch with a big-brain smart grid Phd who, over the course of his long career, has worked with all the major EMS and DMS systems. He considers Telvent's DMS one of the very best.

Yet Telvent does not own the mind share it should given the quality of its solutions. I had always ascribed this to the inconsistent support from Telvent's Spanish parent, which is an IT services company at heart. Telvent has long been rumored to be on the block, and has never received the marketing budget and other home-office support to allow it to break through the noise level.

That changes today. And it is good news for utilities, since it will force the other four majors to work even harder and innovate even faster.

(Incidentally, when Areva T&D sold, Alstom took the T (transmission) and Schneider took the D (distribution). By dint of these two acquisitions, it has in the space of a year gotten its hands on a wide array of distribution hardware and software.)

Jesse Berst is the founder and chief analyst of Smart Grid News.com. He consults to smart grid companies seeking market entry advice and M&A advisory. A frequent keynoter at industry events in the US and abroad, he also serves on the Advisory Council of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Energy & Environment directorate.

 

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Energy education for Architects, Engineers and consumer

Energy Enterprises, Inc. was formed in 1988 to assist schools and municipals to purchase energy in an open market. My back ground was president of a natural gas utility and competed against one of the largest gas utilities in New York State. Today, EE continues to offer our procurement service, however we also see the need to educate the consumer on options available in todays market. Like your article,a small company like Telvent needs the marketing arm of Schneider, ABB and others chasing change in the Utility Industry through out the world. EE is currently working with Architects to help educate them and complete the pulzle before starting a project. We already understand degree days, square ft and cost per BTU, the question becomes how the utility will charge for energy and the engineer, control people design the building as we also Intervene at the NY Public Commission. The missing link is no one wants to develop an Internal Rate of Return on an Investment. Our team is willing to discuss how we can change to grow the energy industry.

William R. Green - 06/02/2011 - 09:37

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