The Networked Grid event has kicked off in the Triangle. Home to over 60 companies working on smart grid technologies, the Research Triangle may be “the silicon valley of the smart grid,” says conference host GreenTech Media (GTM).
As a leading analytics player already installed at over 500 utility customer sites, certainly SAS has a role in the smart grid era. In fact, David Leeds of GTM said to attendees earlier today, "The data scientists and analytic experts that the utility industry needs are either being stolen by Facebook or they work for SAS." GreenTech also named SAS one of the Top 10 Vendors to Watch. Here is a photo of the award they gave us today!
Picking up on the local theme, I toured two local smart grid labs to get a peek behind the world of a hardware provider and a major utility.
ABB’s Smart Grid Center of Excellence is a high-powered testing lab and demonstration center. They have constructed a simple power circuit focused mostly on the ability to detect, isolate, and restore faults (complete with fake trees, grass, and chirping bird sounds). ABB tests not only their branded hubs and switches, but their competitors’ as well. They recognize that utility’s hardware environment is heterogeneous and they need to optimize how their products operate across that diverse data & communications landscape.
Next, we walked over Duke Energy’s Envision Center. This facility explores multiple futuristic scenarios from smart home appliances and home energy management systems, to a Plug-In Electric Vehicle that can put power back onto the grid, to fault isolation on power lines, and finally a peek inside the control center at a utility. The tour conveyed the message that the smart grid is really about optimizing the interactions of players along the energy value chain – starting with customer engagement.
Customers were also at the heart of today’s presentation by Oncor, an electric transmission and distribution company in Texas. They have a mobile version of the demonstration centers that I described above from ABB and Duke. They also use social media extensively to communicate with customers about outages. Check out their Twitter page @Oncor.
In all three cases – ABB, Duke, and Oncor – it is evident that utilities are still testing out the technologies implemented in the smart grid. As William Gibson reportedly said, “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
The past 24 hours has been a wealth of knowledge. SAS’ Randy Guard is presenting tomorrow and you can watch live online at 9am EST. See you there!
