Contributor Bob Gilligan is vice president of transmission and distribution for GE Energy
Yesterday, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, gathered 60 executives, including myself, from utilities, technology providers, trade associations and standards development organizations at the Smart Grid Leadership Meeting in Washington D.C. The goal: to accelerate the development of smart grid standards.
Need for speed: GE’s Bob Gilligan is part of the industry team developing a roadmap for the smart grid’s architecture and key standards.
As with the Internet, technology and performance standards are vital to making the smart grid an efficient, productive and practical success. The current electrical grid in the United States is one of the most complex systems every built. Unfortunately, there has been under-investment in this aging infrastructure for more than 25 years. Upholding the highest degree of safety and security as we transform our aging electrical network into a two-way, interoperable, and intelligent infrastructure will be a tremendous task — and will require that the right standards are in place.
That is why one of the key issues discussed during this meeting was expediting the time it takes to develop standards. Secretary Chu identified the fact that the historic manner of setting standards via voluntary gatherings of experts that meet only twice a year is not adequate for the current task. Secretary Chu and Secretary Locke called on companies to have their experts work in a dedicated fashion on this important challenge to significantly cut standards development time.
The other critical issue discussed at the meeting was the need for the standards currently in place and/or in development to be recognized — so that they can govern the smart grid activity that’s ready to happen now. The standards development work should, therefore, not slow down or adversely impact projects that are underway.
Following this meeting, I am confident that we have the highest level of leadership behind the development of standards for technologies that will deliver a smarter grid. We applaud the government for demonstrating its commitment to this topic by convening these key individuals in Washington yesterday.
No company, government body or organization alone can drive the change we need as an industry to ensure our smart grid journey is a success. We must continue working together to apply our knowledge and combined experience in achieving these objectives.
* Read The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the meeting
* Read Earth2Tech’s story about the meeting
* Read GE’s announcement
* Learn about GE’s smart grid efforts in Florida, Oklahoma and Houston
* Learn about our research into Smart Grid technologies
http://www.gereports.com/making-sure-the-smart-grid-stays-smart/
Tagged as: Energy
Posted on May 19, 2009
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I am in quality oversight for the nuclear business and also serve on the Software Quality Assurance sub-committee for ASME NQA-1. My NQA-1 collegues are focused on the increasing vunerability of our networked infrastructure to computer hackers. What cybersecurity measures does the smart grid technologies use to protect itself?