How to make Smart Grid Smarter?

Recently, I have come across a number of articles talking about how to make the Smart Grid "Smarter" - these articles cover areas such as selecting the right type of communications layer to ensure flexibility, managing the data that would come in, and tracking and sharing the performance results with the stakeholders to learn and adapt. Let's leave alone the fact that the Smart Grid on a national scale is not a done thing yet and each utility/Commission/vendor is defining the term to mean different things. It's a good sign that people are beginning to address the fact that any utility investing millions of dollars in so-called Smart Grid infrastructure is going to have plan for how it can put the data - both operational and energy savings - to good use so that it can fully leverage its investments.

This is something we have been preaching for a long time: it's critical that utilities should properly track and generate appropriate performance analytics, instead of warehousing huge amounts of data. For instance, utility with DR programs can sample and analyze the data from homes, offices, and other facilities to determine close to real-time how much load reduction it's getting from a curtailment event. Similarly, utility can use the metering data to automatically perform M&V for its EE programs, thereby saving the cost of a separate field M&V effort. Then the same information can be used to inform on next year's program planning and adjusting the projected ex ante savings so that the projected and verified savings are as close as possible. Such feedback mechanism not only helps to make the program plans closer to reality, it also helps to forecast lost revenue recovery calculations more accurately.