Smart Grid Race: too slow, too fast or something else?

The utility industry has been abuzz about Smart Grid for the last couple of years - it looks like almost any project is now a Smart Grid project. In the past, they might have been called T&D upgrades, meter upgrades, DR or EE or DSM programs. Now, we have reached the ideal conditions where people are simultaneously claiming the industry on a global basis is going too fast, too slow and something in between. Here are some typical examples from today's news:

Should we stop for Smart Grid standards?

Only Smart Grid can save the planet, says the IEA [really??]

Smart Grid domination requires better policy

In our opinion, this is an issue that is faced by all new technologies: do you put in place a standard first [a la Intel/Microsoft] so that the industry can rapidly grow or do you let products come in and hope a winner will emerge to create a de facto standard [a la VHS or Bluray for DVDs]? The problem in the case of Smart Grid is that the sudden infusion of stimulus dollars provided the utilities with a source of what they considered "free money". This resulted in number of programs that were not launched using rigorous cost-benefit analyses. Now, that these programs are in place, it's proving to be difficult to justify further spending or stop spending. Blaming standards or lack thereof might be convenient, but it points to a deeper problem: unless there are clear metrics to track and evaluate the effectiveness of the projects, these kinds of issues will persist.