FERC Report Sees IT Smarts to Link Smart Meters, Smart Grid

Linking the electrical grids with smart electric meters in homes and businesses should create many job opportunities for IT professionals in the coming years.

Two trends in efficient energy management are converging. One involves advanced meters that monitor and manage electric use in homes and businesses. The other is advance response programs utilities offer that manage customer consumption of electricity in response to supply conditions.

According to a just-released report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 2008 Assessment of Demand Response and Advanced Metering the ratio of advanced meters to all installed meters has reached 4.7% for the United States, a significant jump from the less than 1% in 2006. On the demand response side, 8% of energy consumers in the U.S. participate in some kind of demand response program and the potential demand response resource contribution from all such U.S. programs is nearly 41,000 megawatts, or 5.8%, of U.S. peak demand, according to the FERC report. This represents an increase of about 3,400 MW from the 2006 estimate.

The report suggests the need for IT know-how to expand smart grid and smart metering use:

One way to mitigate risks in planning AMI (advanced metering infrastructure, the technology for gathering and disseminating information at a utility meter) communications networks is to ensure interoperability. Interoperability allows seamless sharing of data and integration of functionality between digital electronic systems (e.g., computing networks, communications networks, computers, computer programs, advanced metering systems, etc).

The technological means of achieving interoperability is through standards for software, hardware, or firmware. Recognizing a need for standards that would enable interoperability, the U.S. Congress in EISA (Energy Independence and Security Act) 2007 directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish “protocols and model standards for information management to achieve interoperability of smart grid devices and systems.”

In the meantime, many utilities proceeding with AMI plans are doing so cautiously, relying to some extent on open standards to mitigate technological risk exposure or planning and budgeting for periodic technology upgrades to their advanced metering system over the life of their system.

Info Tech Pros Could Benefit By Slowing Green Investments

Silicon Valley might pull back in their green startup investments in the coming year, and venture capitalist Rob Day sees that as a good thing.

Michael Kanellos, blogging on GreenTechMedia.com, cites @Ventures partner Day as seeing VC investing in green-tech declining by as much as 40% in the first half of 2009. Funds would be diverted away from crowded markets like solar and biofuels.

Why is that a good thing? Funds that will be invested would be redirected toward areas that could benefit IT professionals. Kanellos writes:

You can already see the re-education of many investors taking place. Many have begun to pay more attention to green software companies and smart-grid companies that hope to port classic IT technologies to the grid. Can smart grid become a bubble too? Sure, but at least it’s familiar territory to many, and these kind of companies don’t need big factories. Thus, the dangers of over-funding are reduced.

Green Jobs Board Launched

A clean-tech research-publishing firm and executive search firm have teamed to launch an online site that posts job openings for the clean-energy and clean-tech industries.

Clean Edge Jobs already has nearly 200 jobs posted. Among these are those demanding IT know-how such as system programmer, web developer, software engineer and data processing specialist.

It's been the contention of this blog that the greening of our businesses, economy and society will create many new employment opportunities for IT professionals.

Are Green Jobs More Secure?

Despite massive job reductions in many industries, green jobs are proving to be resilient, at least in Europe, some recruiters say.

According to a report posted on ClimateChangeCorp.com, the low-carbon job market in Europe continues to prosper. Here's what Ben Cartland of the environment, sustainability and climate-change job recruiter Acre Resources says:

“Appointments are still being made and we are hearing from clients that there is a need to grow their teams. And we are not talking about the standard replacement roles when people leave, these are newly-generated positions.”

Acre is conducting its second annual salary survey, and preliminary results suggest green workers feel more secure about their jobs than they did a year ago.

Cartland says sustainability managers with experience working in large corporations are hard to find as are professionals with renewable energy and engineering experience.

The ClimateChangeCorp posting cites Dawn Kenworthy at environmental recruiter Allen and York as saying the job market for renewables and energy management is booming. She says jobs in energy management are sought after because companies, in a recession, seek to save as much money as possible.

Report: Info Tech Seen Reducing CO2 Emissions Significantly

Much must and can be done by the information and communications technology (ICT) industries to reduce their own carbon emissions. But a just-released addendum to last June’s study for the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, Smart 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy in the Information Age says ITC can help reduce 97% of emissions for the rest of the economy.

Written by the Boston Consulting Group for Ge-SI, the addendum says information and communications technologies are powerful enablers because they give people the information to understand how carbon emissions hurt the environment and the economy. Technology can furnish energy-efficient alternatives to manual, mechanical and physical processes to reduce emissions. According to the addendum:

Replacing physical experiences with virtual experiences, providing information to make better decisions, or cutting waste where it won’t be noticed are just some examples. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy recently issued a report estimating that for every kilowatt hour of energy consumed by ICT, the U.S. economy increases its overall energy savings by a factor of 10. The report cites investment in ICT as a major factor in allowing both the population and economy of the U.S. to grow faster than its energy consumption.

ICT’s capacity to enable energy efficiency can help the economy and reduce the effects of climate change. By 2020, the ICT solutions outlined in this report can reduce an estimated 810 million to 1,410 million metric tons of CO2 from the U.S. baseline of emissions, representing a 13% to 22% reduction in the federal Energy Information Administration’s business-as-usual scenario. This translates to gross savings of $140 billion to $240 billion in avoided electricity and fuel costs. These savings also have significant national security implications as they translate to a reduction in total oil consumption of 11% to 21% and a reduction in dependence on imported oil of 20% to 36%. The range of estimates depends on the rate of adoption of ICT solutions.

In addition to the CO2 abatements sized by this report, ICT can be a powerful lever to change and influence behavior, because it touches the daily lives of people and provides powerful tools for understanding their decisions. ICT’s impact spans beyond technology; it enables the creation of radically new low-carbon business models. For example, ICT can ease coordination among different users to enable services like car-sharing or appliance-sharing to replace individual ownership. These solutions can help reduce the embedded carbon from manufacturing more goods. Thus, ICT’s ability to create transformative change makes it a critical pillar in an energy strategy for a sustainable and prosperous America.

Here's more from the addendum (click on charts to enlarge):