How Brainy Should Smart Grid Be?

Not everyone thinks there should be a lot of intelligence in the smart electrical grid.

The CEO of electricity demand control systems provider Sequentric Energy Systems, Daniel Flohr, prefers a smart grid without too much in the way of brains. Citing Flohr, a posting on the site arstechnica.com says:

Utilities want things reliable, secure and cheap, and it's easier to get all of those by limiting the intelligence of the grid. For something like a hot water heater, all the utility needs to handle is a few bits of communication every year, which is sufficient to shut it off and reactivate it around usage peaks.

But CEO Adrian Tuck of consumer smart-metering system provider Tendril sees consumers benefiting from more intelligence in the system.

Tuck compared the current system, where consumers simply get a bill at the end of the month, to shopping in a supermarket without knowing the prices, then getting an un-itemized bill at the end of the month. Tendril leverages the more elaborate monitoring capabilities of its hardware to provide consumers with a more complete picture of their home's power usage. The utilities collect the data from devices for their own purposes but also make it available to consumers through the Tendril platform.