Plus it seems to me the business case for AMI remains rather weak, see here http://www.sce.com/NR/rdonlyres/6DC13EB1-0AFA-40A8-B9E3-93546F24015C/0/081114_A0707026Final_Decision.pdf
on a 2Bn investment the return in 20 years is a meager 9MM

I do agree with one thing, IP is the way to go, and Chu knows it it will happen

Can you at least point me to documentation so I could at least have the computer I’m writing this on talk to my smart meter?

It took me less than a week to set up http://grid.coop/lmp.html and write the code for it, and now my server responds to 5-minute LMP pricing.

First, don’t believe for a second that there’s a member of congress, or anyone in the White House above a mid-level staffer, who has the slightest idea what IP is.

Second, you’re not going to be able to produce reasonable analysis unless you stop buying your own propaganda about how big, old, non-innovative companies have been surviving strictly on the largess of congenial politicians for years and it’s time to give the smaller innovators a shot.

Just as the vast majority of alternative energy research has historically been done by big energy companies, including big oil, it is also the case that most of the smart-grid research has been done by the stalwarts, which have put many billions of dollars into R&D of technology that in many cases relies on open but not IP standards that they developed for the particular task at hand.

Now it may or may not be the case that IP is a better way to go. Whatever benefits are to be had by using a standard optimized for transmission over power lines may or may not trump the maturity and industry support of IP. But that’s not the point. The point is that it is not for the government to decide whether IP or some other technology is the way to go, particularly when the decision was made by someone who doesn’t know what IP is, or how it works, and only stuck it into the bill because some lobbyist whispered the term in their ear.

The completely understandable objection of the smart-grid industry is that the government is trying, in the stroke of a pen, to render many years, and billions of dollars, worth of R&D investment worthless, and almost certainly without meaning to do so. This would be akin to the FHA passing a rule, in 2011 or 2012 as the Chevy Volt is about to hit the road, saying that the only electrically propelled vehicles are prohibited on US roadways are those employing Hybrid Synergy Drive; or the IRS declaring that taxes may only be filed online by people using a GMail address.

Suppose the government passed a law saying that the product or service that it is your job to provide is illegal except when it’s provided by your biggest competitor. You’re employer wouldn’t be very happy, and I bet neither would you.