Last week my favorite southern city earned its nickname, “Hotlanta,” as the place was simply sizzling with one of the hottest topics these days: Smart Grid. It was the second stop in the six-cities-in-six-months tour that (in full disclosure) my company, Siemens, has been sponsoring.
The goal of this tour is to educate the folks that work in the power industry on one of the most complicated, but vitally important, technological advances the industry is grappling with these days. Smart grid is a short term, but it is long on implications, since the power grid literally connects generated power with buildings and homes far away.
We tried to schedule a day that had “something for everyone,” including sessions on:
- Enabling Generation and Renewables
- Buildings of the Future
- Phasor Measurement Units and the Grid
- Preparing a Building for Smart Grid
- Smart Grid Integration
- Energy Centric Process Transformation: Bridging Operational Technology to Information Technology to create business value
- Automation in the Grid
- Smart Grid: The Vital Role of Industry
- Meter Data Management Systems
One of the areas that is close to my heart is the role a building plays in the Smart Grid. After all, at the end of the road, the grid’s ultimate job is to deliver power to building structures. Our own Jeff Wills talked about how these mindless piles of brick and mortar were going to need to become “smart,” because interacting with the smart grid will help those buildings move from being passive consumers to active contributors.
How may that work, you ask. Another Siemens expert, Bob Dixon, explained that future buildings will be expected to be more sustainable while also interconnected to the smart grid. And, as if this were not enough, those same buildings will have their power usage constantly monitored and rated for performance.
The topic of smart buildings was taken one step further at a thought leadership conference sponsored by The Economist. In that session, G. P. "Bud" Peterson, President, Georgia Institute of Technology; Jeff Seabright, Vice President for Environment and Water Resources, The Coca Cola Company; Nancy Kete, Program Director, World Resources Institute; and Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Global Correspondent, The Economist discussed “Intelligent Urbanization.”
In general, the panelists stressed that as our society becomes more urbanized there is a vital importance that we construct those cities intelligently. One example given by Ms. Kete around the importance of resilience for these areas was the difference between Mexico’s handling of the swine flu versus Haiti’s handling of the earthquake. Mr. Seabright agreed and pointed out that energy infrastructure needs to be enhanced by including a whole host of solutions working together with a wide variety of partners.
Finally Ms. Kete pointed out that smart infrastructure can only help if you have the governance in place to utilize smart people to take advantage of smart technology. Her statement was echoed by the new Mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, who said, “I invited smart people on the topic of sustainability, and then I got out of the way.”
Taking a cue from Mayor Reed, the Siemens Answers. The Smart Grid Tour will try to do the same. With four more stops to go on our tour, we will continue to invite the smart people, in the following cities:
- June 23 – Chicago
- July 14 – Portland
- September 28 – New York City
- October 20-21 – Washington, D.C.
In the meantime, after all the great idea sharing and discussion that occurred last week, perhaps Atlanta’s new nickname should be “Smartlanta.”
To learn more and register to attend in a city near you, go to: www.smartgridtour.com/
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