Is the Smart Grid Inducing Labor Pains?

"The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people."

- Cesar Chavez

It seems that there is a bit of wire crossing happening amid the hardworking folks who are actually many of the hands and feet creating and managing the Smart Grid. In spite of very positive initial reactions to the federal investment of billions into the creation of the Smart Grid, the law of unintended consequences is introducing some consternation among the ranks of organized labor as Smart Grid programs move from philosophy to reality.

While the introduction of the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program was applauded by many in the labor community as the beginnings of a new market for skilled technicians, such as in this AFL-CIO blog post, or this IBEW promotional video, some actual deployments are not being greeted as positive changes.

Most recently, on Jan. 19 the Kennebec Journal reported that IBEW Local 1837 was "speaking out against" a new smart meter installation project by Central Maine Power (CMP) that had been funded to the tune of $96M through the SGIG, and which had a total cost of roughly $190M. Seems that the project would likely eliminate, over time, some 141 positions, and that did not sit well with the union.

The tension at CMP, however, is not unique. In October, a plan by the board of Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division (MLGW) received similar criticism from the IBEW, which noted that roughly 400 meter reading jobs would be lost in that plan.

So How Can There Be Such a Disconnect?
The Smart Grid is comprised of much more than just smart metering. It involves redundancy, and resiliency, and quality of power, and ease of integrating renewables, and storage, and on and on and on. Today's unfortunate reality, however, is that investment has been increasingly targeted to smart metering. Smart meters, and the improvements in automating, and "remotifying" the reading, turn-on, and cut-off of power, are seen as early wins. They do not appear to jeopardize the delivery of power, and can very quickly demonstrate cost efficiency by decreasing truck rolls. This is both a reaction to the government's emphasis of "shovel-ready" projects to fund, and to the ease with which a utility can justify the project to regulators as a cost-saver, paying off the capital cost in short order through a reduction in labor costs. As a result, the union teams, originally anxious to generate skilled labor to drive the construction of the next generation of transmission and distribution, is left, instead with a short-term need for installers that will be wiring up the elimination of hundreds of jobs for their meter reading brethren.

What to Do?
One of the factors underlying the development of the Smart Grid is very much people-related. We have written of it here briefly in the past, but it deserves another shot in this piece. There is an aging workforce that manages the existing grid, one that is retiring at a rapid pace, even in this economy. In an article from April of 2008 Power magazine, the percentage of retiring workers is pretty daunting:

When we then look to the remediative measures that folks are taking, we see the new technologies rearing their heads:

Rightly or wrongly, 90'ish percent of utilities are looking to use new technologies to augment the diminishing staffing, as well as using traditional staff supplementation techniques.

These new technologies are creating a raft of new opportunities for a new generation of skilled labor. Whether it is the implementation and management of transmission and distribution technologies within utility infrastructure, as already looked to by the unions, or the creation of new skills and laborers to assist in residential, commercial, and public construction of homes and power systems that will leverage these new capabilities, the opportunities are many.

Within the greater IBEW, there are already efforts under way to help address this need, including the "National Utility Training Trust," reported on in The Electrical Worker. It looks like they are moving forward to capitalize on the growth of the Smart Grid.

As we have written about previously in the areas of IT adoption and data usage, well-trained personnel are vital to the security of the infrastructure as it grows, and these new resources can integrate security considerations into their own interaction and behaviors in working with the grid, and on its computational components. These new workers have the opportunity to advance their careers, their marketability, and their value, with focus on these additional skills.

This growth though, is not going to come for free. The Smart Grid and the market for power will benefit from this new wave of skilled professionals, but some of that market and advancement will need to be cost-justified through transitioning and re-education of some existing personnel. I hope that as the Smart Grid grows, the labor pool increases to fuel it, and organizations such as the IBEW local chapters become champions of that change and growth and not adversaries, seeking to introduce impediments that can only serve to hobble workers, even as they try to protect them.

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