This is my final post from the now concluded Gridweek 2011.

Anto Budiardjo, a TEC blogger, is the CEO of Clasma Events, which puts on the United States’ key trio of smartgrid events: Gridweek, Connectivity Week, Grid-Interop and next year, Gridweek Asia. Budiardjo has been in smartgrid since the dawn of the industry, moving into it from his previous work in building automation. As such, he’s been a witness to the development of the industry, and indeed, serves as a de facto historian able to comment on the nascent industry’s macro trends.


What trends have you seen as the smartgrid community grows?

Numerous. Obviously at the beginning, 2006-2007, I remember discussions with various groups trying to get money, trying to get funding, and I wouldn’t say scrounge around, but find a few million dollars here or there for pilot programs and education, trying to convince people that smartgrid is something they should be interested in. To 2008, 2009 when there was all the hysteria, if that’s the right word, around the stimulus package and all of a sudden the industry had four billion dollars. So that was an interesting change … there’s a lot of activity that went with that. If you study the Hype curve, we’ve definitely gone through the high point in 2009-2010, and then experienced ‘the value of disillusionment’. That’s really where we are with smartgrid … it doesn’t take away from the need to do work and develop products, or the value of what it is, there’s just not that much excitement about it in the general public. They actually call it the trough of disillusionment, and all technologies go through this. Next is the slope of enchantment…”

What do you think it will take to get average Joes enthusiastic about smartgrid- and is it necessary?

Well, that’s an interesting question. If you think about it, we’ve gone through most of the 20th century without consumers being aware of the electricity system at all, including me before I started in this. Most people just switch the lights on, the lights come on, they pay the bills and occasionally you get a blackout and that’s kind of it. So in the last few years, the industry has been saying that we need consumers to understand energy consumption and the cost of energy, which is valid, companies like Google spent a lot of their effort on energy literacy, which is a term I find quite intriguing. So there’s a lot of that, and it obviously needs to be done. So we’re in that phase right now of trying to educate consumers as to how they use energy and how it can be done better. What’s really strange to me is that eventually, I don’t know 10 or 20 years time, it should really go back to how it was in the 20th century- the light just comes on. The whole notion that consumers will be spending hours of the day looking at energy prices and changing their behavior accordingly … I don’t think it’s going to fly.

This is a transitional time period until all the elements of smartgrid are in place- and we don’t know how many years it will be until we get there- then the ultimate design of the smartgrid is that it will self automated and us humans will just consume.

We’re almost making it difficult right now for consumers… we’re telling them they need to understand it, but ultimately they probably won’t. You can see that in what happened with telecoms. If you went back to 1960-1970, they used to pay a lot for phone service, but it was simple. In the 70s and 80s with the deregulation, we got all the good stuff it brings but it made life really, really complicated in the 90s with multiple long distance or local options, MCI, calling-cards, that kind of stuff. And here we are today when $19.99 gets you a MagicJack with unlimited calling, so life becomes simple again. It’s likely electricity is going through the same transition, and we’re in the complicated period.

What’s the number of smartmeters required for a critical mass for smartgrid to scale?

Yes, I don’t know what that number is… Smartmeters are necessary as the infrastructure for smartgrid. You can’t have smartgrid without the infrastructure connectivity in the home, to the utility backoffice and everything. So you need the infrastructure… and smartmeters are one of the key ways of putting together the infrastructure that is utility friendly and robust in quality. So you really need that infrastructure, in the same way internet could not have happened without modems, and high speed links, and global crossings, and all those companies that poured billions and billions of dollars into the infrastructure. It’s the same way with smartgrid, the only difference is with internet, there were actually investors and speculator companies that were investing in that infrastrucutre buildout. The problem with smartgrid is that we are asking the consumers to pay for it, and the problem comes because consumers don’t see the value of it, typically speaking at the moment.

What’s next up on the list of things to do for smartgrid?

There’s probably several … all of the stuff we’ve talked about explaining its value is key. I think cybersecurity part of it… so those two things.

Why is Smartgrid Asia happening? Why is it important?

Well if you step back and look at what is happeneing in the global picture with China, Asia and  BRIC countries, increasing their visibility and impact on the world… Their economies and cultures need energy, we all know that. But if you look at the numbers, they’re frightening; the carbon numbers, the number of plants being built. So, you look at all of that and compared to that, the power demand increase in the US isn’t much. The power challenge is in the developing countries. China is a big one… they are very aggressive on smartgrid. The next big country for smartgrid, in the next 10 years or so, is India, 1.2 billion people, you really can’t ignore that. Electrification in India is very low compared to the US and Europe, but it’s becoming very built up. Those people are moving to cities in a big way; earlier they mentioned that they anticipate 50% of India’s population will live in cities by 2030. Living in cities means electricity. So the growth in demand in electricity is going to be huge in India. So I’ve been looking for an opportunity to do an event in Asia… Part of all of that is to tell the ‘India story’ as it were, to help communicate what’s happening in India, and the opportunities in India, and that they’re significant.