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 The good news from the recent Smart Grid Security Summit was a consensus we now have the technology needed to enable the smart grid. It's just the start, however.
The better news - because on the other side of problems lies
opportunity - is the technology is not integrated, scaled, or secured
enough. Also, in the quest to develop better connections with consumers,
social media is coming to the forefront.
Integration is still a challenge. At the lowest layer, we have the
basics of sensors and networking in place. At the
next layer, there are folks asking vendors for interoperability
testing, but until utilities line up around at least a baseline of
common functionality plus some value add unique to their system, it's
hard to deliver that.
Scalability is a big issue - it's the same issue people term "big
data" elsewhere. Although the data from a single sensor on a device, be
it a smart meter, or something in the distribution or generation
network, isn't a lot or very high bandwidth, there are millions of
points each utility is dealing with. The in-vogue solution - the cloud -
isn't exactly a solution in some folks eyes.
Security is never absolute, as speakers at the conference have reinforced many times.
In parallel with those three issues, there are the continuing issues
related to consumer privacy, which can't just be mandated with policy
but has to be put in place with people in the loop.
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Re: The Smart Grid: Four Opportunties Beyond the Basics
