Smart-Grid Is Happening Right Now, and Not a Second Too Soon

I concluded the 45-minute talk I gave yesterday at the Santa Barbara Savvy Investors’ Club with a short section on cleantech opportunities, during which I highlighted my belief that smart-grid is going to play a fantastically important role in the very near future.  Proof-points supporting this prediction are all around us, including this recent article, announcing a joint venture between Siemens and Teradata. From the article:

Siemens Smart Grid Division and Teradata today announce a global strategic cooperation in the field of big data. Through this collaboration Siemens Smart Grid further optimizes its portfolio of solutions which will provide energy utilities with a much higher level of transparency on the status and activities in their networks. This will enable the customers of Siemens Smart Grid to improve reliability of their infrastructure and to run their grids more efficiently in an increasingly cost-sensitive environment.

It’s regrettably common for renewable energy advocates to view smart-grid as some sort of futuristic phenomenon that will come along later.  From my perspective, the precise opposite is true; smart-grid is the enabler of clean energy.  In its absence, we will have a very tough time integrating large amounts of solar, wind, etc., into our grid-mix; both the variability of the resources and high levelized cost of energy will remain quite thorny.