Smart Grid Champion Erich Gunther Gets Award At GridWeek Sep 25, 2008   Join the Discussion Smart Grid News provided the title. Erich’s award is well deserved.   Now from Erich:   In the Amphitheater. Today at GridWeek, I was mainly focused on preparing for the two sessions I had presentations at. The first session is entitled “Interoperability Fundamentals” and the second is “Grid Efficiencies:  Anticipated or Real?”    I was planning on presenting some details on one of my clients AMI projects in the second session but at the last minute, my clients concerns over presenting information not yet seen by their regulator scuttled that presentation. I quickly contacted another client about presenting data on their project but we quickly ran into a similar roadblock! So I ended up spending the entire time of the morning keynote in a corner of the Amphitheater creating a presentation from scratch on AMI and smart grid pilot project metrics and sanitizing some real data to make it interesting. I didn’t quite finish that presentation before I had to go to my first session on interoperability – I hope I have time to finish it in time!   Polaris Room. The interoperability session was well attended and Dave Hardin – a fellow GridWise Architecture Council member – did a fantastic job of describing the GWAC’s interoperability framework with some of the best real world examples I have seen yet. My presentation focused on the tools and methods necessary to achieve interoperability using the framework. Rik Drummond finished off the session with an excellent presentation on testing which lead to some lively discussion during the Q&A period.   Lunch – Not! Time to finish the new presentation for the 1:30 session instead of having lunch. Oh well, I am trying to lose weight anyhow! After uploading to the GridWeek PointView web site with 20 minutes to spare, I was ready to go and make the presentation! This was a good session with excellent presentations on smart grid activities at SCE and Progress Energy and some technology that Areva working on – something called Mixed Integer Programming – I have to find out what the heck that is!   GridPoint knows how to throw a party! After the last session, I planned an optimal route to the various vendor receptions to get some free drinks! We started with the IBM/ABB suite then moved on to SmartSynch, then headed out and across the street to the GridPoint bash in the Willard Hotel. GridPoint sure knows how to throw a reception! Great H’orderves! (Erich needs to learn how to spell, but we will forgive him this time.)   Marriott Ballroom – Recognition Dinner. OK, the vendor reception path lined me up for a short walk to the Marriott for the recognition dinner. Last week Anto called me to let me know that I had been selected to receive one of the GridWeek 2008 technology leadership awards – a major honor! It turns out that Jesse Berst nominated me – thanks Jesse! I now remember that I have not written any notes on what I want to say upon receiving the award – in scramble mode again!   As Anto was leading up to announcing my award, he started giving hints. As soon as he said the next recipient is someone who spends a lot of time on a plane and has seat 8A permanently allocated to them, Ron Ambrosio shouted out his guess – Erich! I have to find a way to spend less time on a plane!   I had my acceptance speech written but I don’t think I got through all of it properly so I included the full text below. I mainly had to thank my clients for giving me very interesting and challenging problems to solve.   Marriott Bar:  The Gunther tab is open. Time for a few drinks with friends before calling it a night!   My hotel:  OK, the second shift begins – deliverables due, emails to read and respond to ….     GridWeek 2008 Technology Leadership Award Acceptance Speech   Thank you very much for this most prestigious honor. My receiving this honor is only possible due to the exceptionally hard work of my staff and our business partners supporting me to meet the needs of our clients. We thrive on solving hard problems – really hard problems. I thank our clients for giving us those opportunities! I specifically want to thank Paul De Martini from SCE, Wayne Longcore from Consumers Energy, Pat Waters from Entergy, Ron Hofmann and Mike Gravely from the California Energy Commission, and Arshad Mansoor, Mark McGranaghan, and Don Von Dollen from EPRI for providing us with the opportunity to work on challenging projects. We are working with many other utilities and institutions such as BC Hydro, Duke Energy, TVA, SRP, First Energy, the DOE, Southern Company and many more who have also provided us with the opportunity to advance the state of the art of smart grid technology and vision. I also want to thank Jesse Berst and Phil Bane for giving me the opportunity to express my opinion in the Smart Grid Newsletter and web site on technologies and products that are being deployed to implement the smart grid.   All of this activity has resulted in significant growth in our company – EnerNex was recognized in Inc. Magazine by being ranked as one of the fastest growing privately held companies. We ranked 1709 on the Inc. 5000 list. I might have to consult with Anto and use his marketing expertise to find a way to make being ranked 1709 sound cool! However, our ranking at number 45 on Inc. Magazine’s list of the fastest growing energy companies might make a better story!   Thanks again to our clients for the challenging work and to the GridWeek organizing committee for this award.   Join the Discussion

Erich gets sore feet on the 2nd Day at GridWeek 2008 Sep 24, 2008   Join the Discussion National Press Club Reception – End of day. OK, so I do not know how to blog – I am an engineer after all! So I was told after my first GridWeek blog post tonight. Apparently, there is a “style” to blogging that I was woefully distant from in my first post yesterday. So here goes my next attempt with a renewed effort to be an effective blogger!   Rewind – Morning, GridWeek Keynote. Jeremy Rifkin gave the opening keynote this morning. An effective and dynamic speaker but he appears to me to be a little bit left of Karl Marx in his thinking. He seems to subscribe to a - the sky is falling, too much prosperity in too few hands, we are killing the planet with every breath we take philosophy. Even so, and no matter the wacky (IMHO) path he took to get there, he came to some conclusions on our energy future that I must admit are quite valid.   Jeremy frequently copied Ben Stein’s “Anyone, Anyone,” refrain from the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” while rhetorically querying the audience on statements he posited. No matter his politics, I found many of those statements and especially most elements of his four pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution quite interesting and mostly valid albeit arrived at using flawed logic (IMHO again). Those pillars – Renewable Energy, Buildings as positive Power Plants, Hydrogen Storage, and Smart Grids and Plug-in Vehicles – are all great ideas. I just thought that his - if we wait we are going to be too late and all die – approach to promoting these concepts was too far out. Also, the hydrogen storage specific approach he was promoting is a bit problematic – but storage in general – and he stated that all storage is a good thing – is certainly critical in a modern grid. Overall, he seems to have the same problem that many futurists, prognosticators and promoters of nice, neat solutions to our woes have – they lack an understanding of systems engineering and complexity management and the reality of getting from point A to point B in a manner that is prudent, cost effective and stable. OK – off my soapbox on this one – his presentation mostly was fairly decent.   After Jeremy’s presentation I had a hard time concentrating on Bob Gilligan’s – he was too “normal” for me (I agreed with his positions) – so I left the room to do some networking.   Noon Break – Vendor Display Area. After a brief discussion with a few potential new clients, I headed off to the metro to make the trip to Shady Grove at the end of the Red Line to be met by Srini Krishnamurthy from Eka Systems. My feet are killing me – I hate wearing a suit and dress shoes.   After what seems like an eternity on the metro (only about 45 minutes - I took the orange line to Metro Center and then the red line to Shady Grove) Srini picked me up for a 10 minute van trip to the offices of Eka Systems in Germantown Maryland – all I could think was – this better be worth it!   Eka Systems HQ. I toured their facility and sat down for a meeting with their President and CEO, the CTO, and others on their team. My goal was to learn enough about their product offerings to properly advise my clients and to perhaps review them in my Smart Grid News column. I learned that they have a very bright CTO, a well thought out product architecture and development roadmap, a clear vision with how to manage the cyber security aspects of their system, and a solid philosophy consistent with the principles I promote in the smart grid checklist. Stay tuned for a future review of their product line at SmartGridNews.com.   Back at the Regan Building:  After another hour-long trip back to DC, I arrived in time to start listening to the afternoon session but was quickly interrupted by a phone call – gotta bag the conference again. I don’t feel so bad though after running into a client from First Energy who missed all but the opening plenary due to phone calls – he was on his second battery!   National Press Club – The Reception. I ran into that guy doing video interviews (the same guy narrating those cool videos seen in the sessions) and he noted that a segment he recorded with me yesterday would be featured in a new video to be shown Wednesday – oh boy – what did I say this time?!!!   I can’t believe how impolite this crowd is – Terry Mohn is trying to speak and even with the microphone and after much glass dinging with a sharp metal object he is being drowned out by chatty smart gridders – how rude! I swear someone must have busted that wine glass banging on it to get everyone to shut up and listen to the opening remarks.   OK, the opening remarks are getting a bit winded – we are here to mingle and network after all – a DOE colleague concurs. Even so, it is still rude to drown out Bob Galvin during his remarks – but the event sponsors should not have tried to co-opt so much time for their commercial message – I thank them for the excellent booze though.   Erich trying to get a good meal in DC. On the streets of DC:  Off to dinner with friends, co-workers and potential clients. First to the Old Ebbit Grill – a favorite of mine. Crap, an hour-long wait for 7 people. Some folks outside recommended The Oceanaire at 12th and F. We got in with no wait. The menu was fantastic and our waiter was amazing – too many options! We had a perfect meal with perfect service – but at a price - $600!! Oh well, there goes the overhead – time to up the rates.   Back at the Four Points Sheraton:  wrote this blog entry and prepared to spend the next few hours until around 3 AM doing the work I didn’t do during the day while attending the conference and doing all the other stuff I noted above – life goes on ……      Books by Jeremy Rifkin    Eka Systems web site    Galvin Electricity Initiative    Article by Terry Mohn ... Why Smart Thermostats are part of the Smart Grid    Erich had a great meal at the Oceanaire Join the Discussion

First Day at GridWeek 2008 Sep 23, 2008   Join the Discussion Utility AMI. GridWeek was off to a quick start early Monday morning with a briefing on the progress of the smart grid related activities of the Utility Communication Architecture International Users Group (UCAIug). More than 20 people came to hear about the activities of the users group and what it can do for them. The attendees were briefed on the UtilityAMI common requirements document – a set of 18 fundamental requirements for state-of-the-art metering systems that includes elements such as an integrated disconnect, net metering, two way communications, interval metering, and secure, remotely upgradable firmware.    HAN Requirements. The assembled group also participated in a discussion on the recently released UtilityAMI 2008 Home Area Network System Requirements Specification (HAN SRS). Conrad Eustis from Portland General Electric initiated a discussion on where the utility to consumer HAN interface exists – in the meter or externally. It turns out that the HAN SRS focuses on describing functionality and associated requirements that are independent of any particular technology or the physical location of where those technologies are implemented.   International Summit. The afternoon of this first day was dedicated to a session on smart grid activities internationally, moderated by Erich Lightner, the DOE Smart Grid Director. I was particularly surprised to hear how big of a challenge India has to improve the efficiency of their energy utilization. Smart Grid News published a lengthy article about the Indian grid last year, but the numbers are still astounding – India loses around 50% of the energy they produce in technical and other losses with the energy actually delivered squandered further to power devices that are only 30% efficient on average. This results in the effective cost of energy around $0.40 per kilowatt-hour. The presentation from Smart Grid Australia was also enlightening. The speaker was very passionate in making the case that our industry better get off its duff and modernize the grid or government is simply going to tell us what to do. It is clear that Australia is under significant pressure from politicians and the populace to move forward quickly to reduce their environmental impact and use energy wisely through advanced technology. I just hope that in the US we keep any similar political pressures in check with common sense and most importantly sound, systems engineering practice that results in a long term, optimized approach to modernizing our grid and achieving these worthy goals.       GridWeek 2008 web site     A Smarter Grid for India -- Smart Grid News   Join the Discussion

THE TUESDAY TOPIC Is the smart grid industry stalled? Or accelerating? We're getting mixed signals about the vitality of the smart grid market. On the one hand, the recent DistribuTECH conference was one of the most successful ever. On the other, a well-known Wall Street analyst recently told his clients that the smart metering sector is "facing several headwinds," including weak regulatory support in the U.S. and delays in European adoption. Taking the pulse of the smart grid industry is this week's Tuesday Topic. Click to the discussion now >>