Smart grid investment

The Microsoft Worldwide Utility Industry Survey 2011, released at the CERA Week 2011 in Houston recently, showed that only a modest increase (8 percent) in the number of utilities are moving past smart grid planning and into implementation. However, budgets to support these efforts are on the rise.

What is the role of the government or regulator in the adoption of smart technology within the utility industry. J.Guerry Waters believes that no utility will adopt smart technology willingly without encouragement from regulators. Owenson suggests that operators are looking at innovative ways to meet the concerns of regulators while meeting the financial and operational constraints around which utility operators do business.

Public sectors across the region saw the crisis as a time to fast track deployments. TNS report concludes that large scale digitization projects are still hot in developing countries such as India and China. Smart grid projects on the rise.

J. Guerry Waters and Brian Owenson discuss the trends leading up to the adoption of smart technologies into the utility industry. They list out the challenges that the industry will face as it looks at introducing advance technologies into decades old utility infrastructure.