14 July 2010
Smart Grids Don’t Enlist All Stakeholders
The nation’s Electric Power System serves an all–inclusive range of stakeholders, including fuel suppliers, power generators, power distributors, as well as direct power users and indirect ones: manufacturers, service providers and consumers. What turns the system into a smart grid is employing intelligent criteria for judging the most efficient and advantageous use of its enabling product—purchased energy. This has historically been mediated by the commercial market. However, it has been asserted that using the market’s pricing mechanisms is not sufficiently comprehensive for making those judgments.
There are many other considerations that must be taken into account, including environmental protection, physical and mental health, balanced economic growth, energy conservation, international balance of payments and strategic dependency. The cost of using electric power involves much more than the price determined in the marketplace.
It’s tempting to think that smart grids could be designed to subsume all political decisions that are implicated in the production, distribution and consumption of energy. Unfortunately, society’s issue resolution process is probably not yet able to be replaced by an electronic algorithm.
The nation’s Electric Power System serves an all–inclusive range of stakeholders, including fuel suppliers, power generators, power distributors, as well as direct power users and indirect ones: manufacturers, service providers and consumers. What turns the system into a smart grid is employing intelligent criteria for judging the most efficient and advantageous use of its enabling product—purchased energy. This has historically been mediated by the commercial market. However, it has been asserted that using the market’s pricing mechanisms is not sufficiently comprehensive for making those judgments.
There are many other considerations that must be taken into account, including environmental protection, physical and mental health, balanced economic growth, energy conservation, international balance of payments and strategic dependency. The cost of using electric power involves much more than the price determined in the marketplace.
It’s tempting to think that smart grids could be designed to subsume all political decisions that are implicated in the production, distribution and consumption of energy. Unfortunately, society’s issue resolution process is probably not yet able to be replaced by an electronic algorithm.
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