Standards for Dummies (Who Want to Get Rich)

Standards can make you rich. Or poor. They are about to hit the Smart Grid in a big way. You need to decide right now what to do about them.

Standards are a disruptive force that can turn an industry upside down. We saw this 20 years ago when the IBM PC standard turned former market leaders (such as the Radio Shack TRS-80) into market losers. And then when the VHS vs. Betamax standards struggle stranded millions of early Betamax purchasers. And then when Postscript arrived for desktop publishing. And again when Windows arrived for desktop computing.

There are dozens of similar stories from the past, but none of them fully captures the combination of danger and opportunity that awaits the electric power sector. That’s because (1) we will have so many standards to deal with and (2) we will have so little time to make the adjustments.

So Many Standards...

The Smart Grid is the nexus that links the entire electric power value chain. It has to connect to generation upstream, including intermittent renewables. And to transmission operators and power marketers. And to substations and sensors along the way. And to control rooms at distribution utilities. And to meters everywhere. And to devices inside factories, offices and homes. And soon to millions of electric vehicles.

Our industry will soon be faced with dozens of new specifications. And those standards will show up much faster than normal. As Earth2Tech's Katie Fehrenbacher puts it: “Imagine a standards-making process that’s 10 times more complex than ... the computer industry, with a deadline for delivering those game-changing decisions of mere months.”

... So Little Time

Until recently, electric power was proceeding down the standards path very, very slowly. That changed with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA or “stimulus bill”), which mandated the rapid development of standards and (more importantly) provided funding to make it happen. As a result, at least half a dozen organizations are racing to get standards in place. They want them locked down in time to influence the choice of technologies for Smart Grid stimulus projects.

As a result, the normal timeline will be greatly compressed. Standards will show up in months that might otherwise have taken years.

How to Prepare

So how do you prepare for this wave that’s about to hit the shore? We’re taking several steps here at SGN. One is to create a clearinghouse for Smart Grid standards (more on that later). The other is to help you get up to speed with articles from experts.

When it comes to standards expertise, our friends at EnerNex have perhaps the country’s top pedigree. Co-founder Erich Gunther – who authors SGN’s highly popular Tech Take technology evaluations – has been a fixture at standards meetings for years.

We asked Erich and his colleagues to prepare a primer as a series of short articles. You’ll find the first one linked immediately below. It gets you started with the all-important task of understanding just what constitutes a true standard, as opposed to a specification or a requirement.

Whether you are a utility professional, a vendor, or a regulator, you’re going to need to understand these distinctions very well and very soon. Click below to get some quick coaching from the nationally known experts at EnerNex.

   What’s in a Name? The Idiot’s Guide to Standards, Part 1

   Katie Fehrenbacher's earth2tech blog