Microgrids Need To Adopt Standards In Order To Succeed

When one thinks back across the last 100 years of world commerce, one finds numerous junctures at which the subject of technical standards was extremely important.  Those of us old enough to remember will tell you that IT standards were a big deal in the late 20th Century, e.g., the IBM 370-architected mainframe vs. open systems, Microsoft vs. Apple, UNIX vs. the numerous proprietary operating systems, Token Ring and Novell vs. Ethernet, etc.).  All that’s fairly old hat now, but look at all the present-day hub-bub surrounding clean tech: standards for electric vehicle charging, standards for communication among devices in the “Internet of Things,” and so forth.

According to this article, microgrids will not and cannot be successful until decisions are made about a certain issue.  Guess what?  It’s standards.