Smart Grid Adoption Will Go Through States, CTIA Told
SAN FRANCISCO -- State public utility commissions will be the bottleneck through which most smart grid technology investment will pass, industry executives and a California state commissioner said Tuesday. “When we talk about implementation of the grid, what we're really talking about are state policies, state roadmaps and state decisions,” said Mary Brown, Cisco director of technology and spectrum. “There is an awful lot of work to be done where the rubber meets the road at the state commissions,” she told a Federal Communications Bar Association seminar on emerging wireless issues at the CTIA show.
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Many state commissioners are skeptical that smart grid technology is a wise investment, said Commissioner Dian Grueneich of the California PUC, herself a supporter of the technology. If more commissioners get engaged in the technology work that’s being done at a federal level, it could help speed adoption at the states, she said. Of the approximately 200 state commissioners, only a handful are involved in the work the National Institute of Standards and Technology is doing around smart grid standards, she said. “If commissioners have no understanding of what the process is and why the standards matter, you can end up with cases in dockets that take two years to get through a commission."
State commissioners are wary of consumer backlash, Grueneich said. Members of the public attend every California PUC to voice their concerns about how data about their gas and electricity use will be shared with third parties, she said. To avoid backlash, the industry needs to better explain the benefits to consumers, she said.
Wireless communications will be a big part of smart grids as they develop, but some utilities are reluctant to contract all their information needs to wireless carriers, said Solomon Tessema, director of IT technology at Southern California Edison. “Utilities have unique requirements that don’t exist in the healthcare industry or financial industry.” Geographical coverage to remote areas where utilities operate transmission equipment, emergency availability and low-latency communications will all be critical components of the smart grid’s communication network infrastructure, he said. Utilities won’t rule out working with carriers, but they won’t rely entirely on their networks either, he said. “As always, we've used a hybrid approach.” Ultimately, building out the smart grid will be a multi-decade task, Tessema said.
Verizon Wireless is strengthening its network to accommodate some of the needs of utilities, said Brian Dostal, manager of vertical data sales. “A lot of what we see as far as the needs of the smart grid are not that different from what we need today as consumers or businesses from the public cellular networks.” Certain applications may need lower latency, or greater emergency reliability, and that can be built into the network, he said.
CTIA Notebook
The FCC should clarify whether and how it will resolve Channel 51 interference issues to the 700 MHz A-block spectrum, said Greg Widroe, managing director of Media Venture Partners. “It needs to be fixed or it needs to be declared, ‘We're not going to fix it,'” he said. If the government steps aside, A-block spectrum holders could reach private deals with TV broadcasters on Channel 51 to find another frequency, he said.