The Dark Side of the Smart Grid (Updated)

The Smart Grid promises to make our energy (and also water and sewage systems) more efficient, robust and responsive by building a paired parallel information and control network onto the existing distribution networks. However hooking up the grid’s multitude of component units to a network also opens up the potential for the grid to be hacked — in much the same way anything that is exposed to the internet can be hacked.

Seven Up and Coming Smart Grid Software Companies to Watch

The Smart Grid will require substantial information processing, storage and data mining resources. An entire new software sector is rising to meet the challenges and fill the many new needs opened up by its arrival. Spending on the smart grid is estimated to be $165 billion over the next 20 years (Source: EPRI) and a good portion of this will be on software and data services. Here is a list of seven of the up and coming software companies that are actively offering software for the Smart Grid, for Smart Meters, for Power Analytics, for systems focused on improving the energy efficiency of the grid, and for energy management systems for homes and businesses tied to Smart Grid networks and designed to operate with it.

Smart Meters Open Up New Software Sector

Smart meters, which are meters that are hooked up to a network so that they can deliver information about current usage in a timely manner, are rapidly becoming ubiquitous. Smart meters will enable real time energy decisions in response to current conditions. They form a critical cornerstone of the smart grid; in fact in many ways they are the “smart” in the smart grid. This opens up a whole slew of new opportunities for smart software developers and smart entrepreneurs [no pun intended] to build the software applications and services to support and to add value to these new smart networked grids. What kinds of software opportunities exist in this newly opening sector?

The Green Economy Will Need a Smart Grid…and Building it will be Big Business

Many believe that the green economy will be powered by the wind and by the sun. But fewer people are aware that to make this possible we need to profoundly transform the current electric grid to control and manage renewable energy supplies. Balancing load and demand is a quite a challenge with renewable supplies that are intermittent and depend on the weather. Without a robust ability to continuously balance energy supply and demand, wind or solar energy sources can have a profoundly negative impact on grid operations, reliability and power quality and force grid operators to make costly and inefficient adaptations to current spot conditions.