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A Smarter, Greener Grid: Forging Environmental Progress Through Smart Energy Policies and Technologies: Forging Environmental Progress Through Smart Energy Policies and Technologies
The United States' electrical grid is an antique. It was built to serve a 20th-century economy and designed in an era when the negative environmental impacts of electricity production were poorly understood. It must be upgraded and modernized. The proposed solution is a smart grid--a network of new digital technologies, equipment, and controls that can respond quickly to the public's changing energy needs by facilitating two-way communication between the utility and consumers. This book explains the environmental benefit of a smart grid, examines case studies of existing smart grids, and identifies the legal and regulatory policy hurdles that must be overcome to fully realize the smart grid's benefits.Based on six diverse organizations' experience as early adopters in the digital energy revolution, the authors explore how a smart electric grid offers real promise for supercharging energy efficiency, democratizing demand response, electrifying transportation, preparing for ubiquitous distributed clean energy technologies, and automating the distribution system. Against the backdrop of climate change and continuing economic uncertainty, setting a path for environmental improvement and upgrading our electric grid with new digital technologies and associated smart policies is more critical than ever before.
361 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 31, 2014
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August 15, 2014
This book isn't very good. Our outside counsel sent it over to me, so I figured I'd give it a courtesy read. The basic thesis is that if the authors could change the entire US energy system that has taken a hundred years and trillions of dollars of capital to build, they could make something that might be a bit more efficient and environmentally friendly.
The problem (other than the hubris of such sweeping generalizations) is that the suggestions are not in the least practical to implement. As the authors note, the electricity system is the largest machine in the world. It's governed at federal, state, and local levels across thousands of jurisdictions with hundreds/thousands or providers using dozens of technologies. Modifying this system to fit the design of the book is, frankly, impossible to do over the next few decades.
It's one thing to say, "real-time pricing from third-party providers, paired with advanced metering infrastructure, is great." But many states make this approach illegal, for all sorts of good, consumer protection reasons. Keeping those protections in place while carving out the necessary measures would be a herculean task. Repeating this process for every utility in every jurisdiction takes the task from herculean to Sisyphean.
The authors simultaneously argue that pilot programs have gone well and have returned 300% to 600% value, and yet utilities across the country are (for reasons unknown) not pursuing these returns. If a vertically integrated utility really could turn its 9.5% ROE into a 600% ROE by making a few minor changes, I suspect a book by two academics in Vermont wouldn't be the catalyst it needs to make that change. In short, I'm skeptical that IOUs and state commissions are leaving literally trillions of dollars of value on the table that has just now been discovered by the authors.
And this criticism does not even get to the content of the book: it's quite clear that the authors are not industry insiders but rather are academics. Even basic concepts relating to baseload power and recovery of capital costs appear to reflect a naïve or misinformed understanding of how the sector works.
Basically, the book is a data dump with high-level and thoroughly impractical policy conclusions. The policy conclusions sound nice, and I would not be surprised to see things move in the directions outlined over time. But the energy industry doesn't need another pie-in-the-sky book elucidating policy as much as it needs a nuts-and-bolts plan to implement the ideas thought up by academics.
The problem (other than the hubris of such sweeping generalizations) is that the suggestions are not in the least practical to implement. As the authors note, the electricity system is the largest machine in the world. It's governed at federal, state, and local levels across thousands of jurisdictions with hundreds/thousands or providers using dozens of technologies. Modifying this system to fit the design of the book is, frankly, impossible to do over the next few decades.
It's one thing to say, "real-time pricing from third-party providers, paired with advanced metering infrastructure, is great." But many states make this approach illegal, for all sorts of good, consumer protection reasons. Keeping those protections in place while carving out the necessary measures would be a herculean task. Repeating this process for every utility in every jurisdiction takes the task from herculean to Sisyphean.
The authors simultaneously argue that pilot programs have gone well and have returned 300% to 600% value, and yet utilities across the country are (for reasons unknown) not pursuing these returns. If a vertically integrated utility really could turn its 9.5% ROE into a 600% ROE by making a few minor changes, I suspect a book by two academics in Vermont wouldn't be the catalyst it needs to make that change. In short, I'm skeptical that IOUs and state commissions are leaving literally trillions of dollars of value on the table that has just now been discovered by the authors.
And this criticism does not even get to the content of the book: it's quite clear that the authors are not industry insiders but rather are academics. Even basic concepts relating to baseload power and recovery of capital costs appear to reflect a naïve or misinformed understanding of how the sector works.
Basically, the book is a data dump with high-level and thoroughly impractical policy conclusions. The policy conclusions sound nice, and I would not be surprised to see things move in the directions outlined over time. But the energy industry doesn't need another pie-in-the-sky book elucidating policy as much as it needs a nuts-and-bolts plan to implement the ideas thought up by academics.
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