GridWeek Looks Beyond the Stimulus

GridWeek is an annual event located in Washington, DC that focuses on progress in developing the Smart Grid. The scope of this year's event grew to include greater international participation. At GridWeek, ARC Advisory Group also learned how US utilities plan to sustain their smart grid investing during the austere, post-stimulus utility business climate that looms. In the utility market, policy leads, especially regulatory policy. In many cases, policy is still catching up to new grid technologies.

International Focus at GridWeek
The entire first day of the event was devoted to international content, highlighted by the attendance of a large delegation representing the Indian government, Indian utilities, and Indian electrical manufacturers. Several sessions featured this delegation, including a keynote from India's Secretary of Power.

Stakeholders in the North American grid often fret about the fragmented state of the utility market, preferring the problems faced by countries like France with state monopoly utilities. However, after a day of discussion by international visitors it became clear that, just as diverse business structures are possible for a nation's electric power industry; there are also diverse reasons for smart grid investment.

In the case of India, the business drivers are to reach large un-served segments of the country's population with electric service and to reduce the grid's "non-technical losses" (a euphemistic term). Happily, reducing such losses was what truly paved the way for Italian ENEL to deploy more than 30 million meters, at a time when such a deployment was probably 50 times larger than any other worldwide. Utilities should not neglect theft reduction as a source of smart grid ROI. The benefits are relatively easy to measure, the value can be substantial, and the application has social benefits. Unfortunately, this benefit area is often kept under wraps since it is a difficult topic for both utilities and regulators to speak about.

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