Comments on: A Dozen Things the Smart Grid Can Learn from the Internet

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:28:43 +0000

I’m dumber now for reading this. The title should have read “A dozen things the smart grid can learn from the Internet that the Internet learned from the electrical and telecom industries”. Or maybe this guy should have done some research beyond Google.

1: Right — the Internet never has scalability (i.e. bandwidth) problems or localized outages. Never had them either, right?

2: The Internet isn’t OSI model. Incidentally, the OSI model came out of the ITU — a telecom standards body. Yep, old, crusty telecom. The TCP/IP stack kindof maps to OSI, but the OSI is an unimplemented ideal. And if you look into the history of TCP and the Internet, you’ll find it wasn’t always one big happy California love-fest of TCP!

3: Security was NOT built into the Internet at ANY layer. That came later, in pieces, and patches, and it’s still not there for a good part of it.

4: “Build web pages?” is your answer for management tools? Really? A better analogy might have been SNMP, if you had to stick to the Internet metaphor.

5: Please tell me, what are these “open API’s” of the Internet? Again, claim without example. Still, if the author meant perhaps the transport protocols and such defined by the RFC’s, the best ones were written by one or two people who were solving a problem — not by a committee defining a spec for a solution to a problem that doesn’t yet exist in the real world.

6: This reminds of the Slashdot success formula meme: “1. buy a computer. 2. learn to program. 3. ????? 4. PROFIT!!!!” So, in other words, to be successful, it has to build something successful. Genius.

7: …. to do what? Seriously, give some example of why I should care how the power I use is routed to my house.

8: Ahh, task forces. What would we do without ‘em? Isn’t this a bit the same as #2 and #5?

9: Uh, wasn’t this #3?

10: Same as #1. But, please give an example of an Internet disaster where the same equipment was providing telephony service.

11: #8 again?

12: Uh, no. Pornography drove the popularity of the Internet.

By: Brian B

Brian B — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:11:28 +0000

Regarding bullet #5 “Open APIs”…
An “API” already exists for integrating Transmission and Distribution systems and components, including their supporting software. It’s called the Common Information Model, or CIM, for Electric Utilities. CIM is an enterprise model that is vendor neutral and allows disparate systems and components to communicate via an industry agreed upon and built UML model. The infrastructure items mentioned in bullet #5 are easily covered by CIM. CIM has been developed by utilities, for utilities, and is suppoorted by leading electric utility vendors. CIM also works with Home Area Networking models such as Zigbee. Check it out at the URL provided above.

By: How WiMAX Can Retool the Power Grid [GigaOM] | BYOHosting.com Blogs

How WiMAX Can Retool the Power Grid [GigaOM] | BYOHosting.com Blogs — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:21:35 +0000

[...] the company on the success of the WiMAX standard — hardly a sure thing — but if the smart grid really will follow the lessons of the Internet, open standards will be a key [...]

By: How WiMAX Can Retool the Power Grid

How WiMAX Can Retool the Power Grid — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:01:54 +0000

[...] the company on the success of the WiMAX standard — hardly a sure thing — but if the smart grid really will follow the lessons of the Internet, open standards will be a key driver. [...]

By: Rise & Shine: May 1, 2009 | Sweet Solar Home

Rise & Shine: May 1, 2009 | Sweet Solar Home — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:24:52 +0000

[...] A Dozen Things the Smart Grid Can Learn from the Internet Here are some thoughts for how we can learn from the history of how the Internet was built, which will help us move into the fast-lane to tackle this massive task and monumental opportunity. [...]

By: Scott Van Dam

Scott Van Dam — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:57:29 +0000

The current state of the grid is so out of date and has not recieved an overhaul in almost 50 years. It's old technology! In regards to point 4 and 5 I like what you said. It reminds me of a phrase "You can't manage what you can't measure" Access to immediate data on your consumption will greatly impact Demand Response, and Conservation Management. Imagine if we open up some of that data to the cloud and what kind of interesting scenarios we could have? Perhaps you'll be able to log into your twitter feed and see your hour by hour consumption on your mobile phone?

By: What the Smart Grid Can Learn From the Internet

What the Smart Grid Can Learn From the Internet — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:04:52 +0000

[...] Katie Fehrenbacher | Thursday, April 30, 2009 | 11:04 AM PT | 0 comments The success of the future smart grid depends on using the wealth of knowledge created from building out the Internet. Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe thinks we should study its lessons and apply them carefully, as does Capgemini’s Balaji Natarajan, who’s penned this handy list in A Dozen Things the Smart Grid Can Learn from the Internet. [...]

By: A Dozen Things the Smart Grid Can Learn from the Internet « SmartGrid Current

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:54:17 +0000

[...] A Dozen Things the Smart Grid Can Learn from the Internet Posted April 30, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | http://earth2tech.com/2009/04/30/a-dozen-things-the-smart-grid-can-learn-from-the-internet/ [...]

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:41:57 +0000

False analogy.

If anything the smart grid is more like the NYSE, not the internet. It is something that (in theory) can provide greater efficiency through improved liquidity of value of the commodity that is electricity.

But beware. Here be dragons. Electricity is poorly understood as a commodity that is not regulated.

Oops. I forgot. Most of the readers of this blog are Californians. You like to de-regulate things like electricity, then run around like headless chickens when everything breaks.