About a hundred years ago (well, in 1985, actually), a reincarnation of the legendary 1960s rock group, Jefferson Airplane – by then known as Jefferson Starship – released an album titled, Knee-deep in the Hoopla. Some of the hardcore Rock ‘n’ Roll junkies labeled it a sell-out to the Soft Rock/Disco crowd, but I thought it was one of their better collections, albeit a very different music genre from their earlier, mostly psychedelic, roots. For those not entirely familiar with this highly technical term, ‘hoopla’ means: “informal excitement surrounding an event or situation, especially when considered to be unnecessary fuss.” Yep, that sure sounds like our Smart Grid, doesn’t it?

Okay, this is just my way of broaching the point that the Smart Grid is finally beginning to show signs of emerging from the ‘hype’ phase (the hoopla, if you will) into more of a reality phase. There has already been a lot written about the hype surrounding Smart Grid, which is in itself sort of a ‘hype-ish’ term for something that I think most experts would agree has been quietly – and many would argue, much too slowly – transforming the power grid for decades.

I really don’t want to dwell on what has gone wrong over the past few years. After all, there’s plenty of ammunition there if we wanted to delve into it – but let’s not. Instead, let’s talk about what is being done and what still needs to be done along the path to the future. That all starts with what I’ll call ‘quiet progress’.

Despite Smart Grid seeming like nothing but talk, talk, talk, talk, talk – many of the right things have indeed been happening. Yet to observe the general media, one would think that the only Smart Grid progress made
over the past two years was the initiation – and in some cases, the completion – of smart meter deployments.

But, the reality is that smart metering is only a relatively small portion of what Smart Grid is really all about. Significant strides have been made in areas like the deployment of phasor measurement units (PMUs), which dramatically improve state estimation; an upsurge in the deployment of feeder automation to better deal with fault detection, isolation and restoration (FDIR); volt-var optimization (VVO); and considerable advances have been made in reliability and critical infrastructure protection, just to name a few of the more important ones.

However, in the last few weeks of 2011, I started seeing headlines and reading stories about how the investment community and – as some articles implied – the entire utility industry, has grown weary of Smart Grid. The broader implications are that investments might start to wane in this new year, to which my question is this: How does one get burned out on something that has only just begun?

The only way that I know to draw a conclusion like that, is to have believed all the hype in the first place and then simply give up because the hype failed to deliver – and that’s exactly what seems to have happened here. Indeed, a lot of people have been led to believe that smart meters ARE the Smart Grid (and vice-versa), and as I certainly hope those of us on the inside of this issue are well aware, that is simply not the case. One important piece of good news is that we now have a vehicle to help begin to correct this pervasive misunderstanding among the group that understands Smart Grid the least: consumers.

To help with that, a Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative¹ – “a consumer-focused nonprofit aiming to promote the understanding and benefits of modernized electrical systems among all stakeholders in the United States” – has recently been formed to help drive these objectives home. (Pun intended!) Much has been written – and in the future will (appropriately) continue to be written – about consumer empowerment and customer education.

The notion that users need to be educated (reprogrammed?) to understand the realities of smart meters is right on the money. But, besides educating consumers about how power is produced, delivered and metered, there are other messages that need to be conveyed to them as well.

Among the first, and perhaps the most important, of these messages is that just because smart meters didn’t magically lower everyone’s electric bills (talk about hype!) overnight, that doesn’t make the Smart Grid a flop!

Clearly – and unfortunately – this is not only a technical issue, but one that is politically charged as well. There are those who feel strongly that the government should not play a central role in financing Smart Grid initiatives, and they do have a point. However, on balance, modernizing the nation’s electric grid is a legitimate national security issue, and occurring in the midst of a recession, it seems that we could certainly do worse with our tax dollars – and often do.

As we look forward to another new year, let’s look harder at transforming the grid from one-way power flow and one-way communications to the bidirectional power and communications networks that are desperately needed to meet the needs of the 21^st century and what once again appears to be a growing economy. Again, there is much to be done. The tasks range from upgrading substations and re-conductoring power lines to finding ways to assimilate large amounts of data and create better, faster and more reliable communications channels. And, with a declining infrastructure and an aging workforce working in tandem to hinder our progress, it’s time to rise to the occasion.

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll undoubtedly hear it again: ‘Smart Grid won’t be fast, and it won’t be cheap’, so we can’t afford to go into this challenge thinking that it will. And no matter how much we spend or how long it takes, smart meters alone won’t get the job done. The only way is to pursue a comprehensive and methodical long-term commitment to addressing the numerous challenges that still remain ahead. (Less hype and less hoopla would be good here too.) – Ed.

¹ See Guest Editorial by Patty Durand, SGCC Executive Director, in the October 2011 issue of EET&D in the Magazine Archive section at electricenergyonline.com.