Austin’s Clean Energy Venture Summit included a session on the Utility of the Future, including Roger Duncan from Austin Energy, Robert Howard from Pacific Gas and Electric, Paul Thomas of Green Mountain Energy, Brad Gammon from IBM, and consultant Alison Silverstein. They described an energy Internet or network of energy networks, including addresses for all outlets and devices and robust metadata systems for monitoring and regulation, optimizing overall efficiency. It won’t be easy to implement – it’s a complicated problem to combine an energy bus and an IT bus for every structure. There’s also major load swings we’re just beginning to understand, according to Duncan, such as load reduction through pervasive implementation of energy-saving light bulbs and load increase (or shift) as pluggable hybrids start appearing. Howard foresees plugin hybrids serving as alternative reserve energy supplies as well, once we’ve solved the (not insigificant) problem of energy storage. It’s an interesting time to be a public utility, with the paradigm for the transmission and delivery of utility services at the edge of significant change that, while inevitable, is stalled somewhat by the inherent risk-averse conservatism of most utility companies – Austin Energy and Pacific Gas & Electric are exceptionally forward-looking… (more)
(Posted by Jon Lebkowsky in Energy at 5:01 AM)