Greentech: Wind

What to Make of Geothermal’s Numbers

2012-05-24T10:00:00+00:00

The Geothermal Energy Association’s newest report on global growth is an admirable effort on putting on a happy face -- but its numbers tell another story.

The association reports, for instance, that in 2010 geothermal energy generated “twice the amount of electricity as solar energy did worldwide.” The world’s installed grid-connected PV capacity went from 7.4 gigawatts at the end of 2009, to 16.8 gigawatts at the end of 2010, to 29.7 gigawatts of grid-connected PV at the end of 2011.

The world’s installed geothermal capacity, as of May 2012, was 11,224 megawatts (11.2 gigawatts), up from 10.7 gigawatts of installed capacity in 2009 (according to the IEA). It would appear geothermal did have the lead sometime in 2010, but comparing the sectors' growth rates is not flattering to geothermal. (Geothermal obviously has an advantage when it comes to generating kilowatt-hours due to its higher capacity factor.)

The telling measure is geothermal’s U.S. performance. According to the GEA report, utility-scale geothermal originated in the U.S. in the 1960s. The U.S. “remains the world leader with approximately 3,187 megawatts of installed capacity,” but the GEA reported it brought only “approximately 91 megawatts of capacity on-line between 2011 and early 2012.”

That’s far less than the 1,855 megawatts of photovoltaics deployed in the U.S. in 2011.

The U.S. wind industry added 6,816 megawatts (6.8 gigawatts) of new capacity in 2011, a 30 percent increase over the previous year’s growth.

There is, however, cause for optimism in the geothermal industry. While GEA President Karl Gawell noted that “growth in the United States is still hindered by uncertainty about the direction of government policy” (an observation echoed by leaders in the solar, wind and natural gas sectors in 2012), the rest of the world plans to seize the geothermal opportunity.

The Turkey Geothermal Association estimates, according to GEA, that its industry will grow from 100 megawatts of installed capacity to 500 megawatts by 2015. Kenya, with 202 megawatts of installed capacity, is developing fourteen new sites. And Indonesia, which is situated on the famed ring of fire and is estimated to have 27,510 megawatts of geothermal potential, intends to build its installed capacity to 5,000 megawatts by 2025.

A recent GTM interview with EnergySource President and CEO Dave Watson, who just commissioned the 49-megawatt Hudson Ranch I project in California’s potential-rich Salton Sea known geothermal resource area (KGRA) and is already readying a matching 49-megawatt Hudson Ranch II project, offered insight into the GEA’s positive attitude.

“At some point,” Watson said of grid operators now buying up solar and wind contracts, “they’re going to want some grid stability [and] we’re running twenty-four hours a day. When the utilities get tired of dealing with intermittency and want baseload renewables, there’s really only one source -- and that’s geothermal."

Have Wind, CSP, and PV Turned Against Each Other?

2012-05-21T15:00:03+00:00

The three major investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in California are well on their way to meeting their obligations to provide a third of their power from renewable sources by 2020. As a result, they and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), their regulators, are no longer thinking only about the quantity of the renewables they want. They are starting to think more carefully about the quality of the renewables and how they will fit into utility portfolios.

As of May 2012, according to the CPUC, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) had procured renewables capacity equal to 20.09 percent of its 2011 electricity. San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) had procured 20.80 percent, and Southern California Edison (SCE) had 21.07 percent. At recent conferences in San Francisco, San Diego, and Phoenix, renewables investors repeated, off-the-record, that the IOUs may have as much as three-quarters of their 2020 obligations under contract.

To determine the best economic choices to fill out the remainder of the renewables portfolio, the CPUC is considering a new formula. In his April 5 Rulemaking, Commissioner Mark Ferron described a redefinition of the 2004 “least cost, best fit” formula for capturing the full range of costs and benefits of renewables selected to meet the RPS.

In it, the Net Market Value (R) of a generation source is defined as [Energy Value (E) + Capacity Value (C)] – [Post-Time-of-Delivery Adjusted Power Purchase Agreement Price (P) + Transmission Network Upgrade Costs (T) + Congestion Costs (G) + Integration Costs (I)].

For an Adjusted Net Market Value (A), the CPUC would sum that Net Market Value (R) and Ancillary Services Value (S).

There is not yet agreement on what these terms entail. Scientists and researchers at places like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) are still helping to better define and quantify the factors most useful in planners’ decision-making processes.

“What the CPUC might be trying to do there,” speculated LBNL’s Andrew Mills, is formalize the “least cost, best fit methodology used for procurement” and to “look at those individual components and make sure they’re using the best approach for quantifying them.” Those components, Mills said, include benefits like capacity value and energy value and costs like transmission upgrades and integration of variable renewables.

The term 'capacity value,' he explained, is an attempt “to quantify the ability of a resource to avoid the need to build other peaker plants.” A peaker plant, he said, is built to supplement generation at peak demand periods. It is “the resource you would build if you need something that just provides capacity [and] the ability to meet peak loads.”

Resources that reduce the need to build fossil-fueled peaker plants provide capacity benefit and therefore have capacity value, Mills said.

In explaining the value of BrightSource Energy’s concentrating solar power (CSP) plants with thermal energy storage (TES) capability, the company's Vice President for Government Affairs and Communications Joe Desmond described a 2006 California “heat storm” during which “the California ISO reached its all-time maximum demand” and had “about 3,000 megawatts of wind available,” but “the amount of wind delivering electricity into the system when it hit its peak demand was 1 percent.”

Desmond was attempting to characterize CSP with TES as valuable but some in wind thought he made wind’s contribution sound trivial, whereas, Mills pointed out, it was delivering 30 megawatts of capacity value at the time. Because a small peaker plant might be no more than 50 megawatts, that contribution from wind avoided 60 percent of the cost of building one.

Mills’ calculations would suggest to planners, however, that Desmond might have a point about CSP with TES being more likely to provide a higher capacity value.

“Energy value,” Mills said, “is thinking more broadly about the entire year.” It asks the value of the fuel saved when renewables generation allows the backing off of power plants.

Mills’ work has focused not only on quantifying these values but also on understanding how they change with increasing penetrations into a transmission system’s overall portfolio.

The challenge, Mills said, is in making procurement decisions. That should include the benefit of renewable resources as defined in the least cost, best fit methodology. But it must also consider the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for those resources.

“There has been a tendency to compare only on an LCOE,” Mills said. “It’s the combination of those two that you can use.”

At zero percent penetration of PV with a hypothetical value of $90 per megawatt-hour and a cost of $100 per megawatt-hour, Mills said, “the renewable premium, or what the PUC is calling Net Market Value is in the range of $10 per megawatt-hour.”

A CSP plant might provide the same value of $90 per megawatt-hour, but a hypothetical cost might be more like $200 per megawatt-hour. Then, he said, “the renewable premium is $110 per megawatt-hour.”

Useful definitions and the relative importance of components in the procurement equation like energy value, capacity value and transmission costs are emerging, Mills noted. But much uncertainty remains.

“Rather than say that you should change your portfolio and only go with wind or solar, we’re trying to draw attention to these issues,” Mills said. “We’re a couple of levels back from saying you should adjust your procurement, at the level of saying you should adjust where you’re focusing your analysis.”

Utilities’ Honest Assessment of Solar in the Electricity Supply

2012-05-07T14:00:47+00:00

Photovoltaic solar is now the concern of utilities and the nation’s biggest energy companies.

At the GTM solar summit in Phoenix last week, GTM CEO Scott Clavenna probed planners for insights into the industry’s future.

“We look at solar as a way to build clean generation and help our customers save money on the cost of their electricity and meet their sustainability goals,” offered power giant Constellation Energy’s Senior Vice President of Green Initiatives Michael D. Smith.

“With the RPS in California beginning in 2002 to 2003, we have a lot of wind and some biomass,” said J.C. Thomas, Regional Manager of investor-owned utility San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), who continued, “We’re now starting to see the solar roll in on a larger scale.”

With solar’s growth, Thomas said, “We are ground zero for all its effects. One of the effects we’re seeing is the significant cost shift that’s occurring once you start net metering and the other customers are picking up the tab. It’s a serious issue.”

“We haven’t found a profitable way to invest in solar,” said Matthew Barmack, Calpine Corporation Director of Market and Regulatory Analysis, the panel’s cynic. “If you have it figured out, let us know. We’ve been through bankruptcy once before.”

On Thomas’ concern about net metering, Barmack noted that it “takes money away from conventional generators and gives it back to load. Theft is very profitable if you can get away with it.” Calpine follows solar “pretty closely,” he added, but “until the utilities start looking much harder at the operating characteristics of some of the different types of renewable resources, geothermal will not beat PV or wind.”

“Our solar business is not small, is not passive and is not pessimistic,” replied mega-player NRG Energy’s Senior Vice President for Sustainability, Strategy and Policy, Steve Corneli. “We look at solar as one of the key competitive power sources of the next decade.” But, he said, that does raise “some challenging issues about how we get from here to there.”

Clavenna asked the panel to compare wind and solar.

“Solar has advantages,” Corneli said. Wind is most productive at night, while solar “has the bulk of its production in or around the middle of the day or a little later, [and] power is worth more in the daytime.”

Solar also “has the great advantage of being close to major load centers, and the potential for distributed solar is extremely high,” Corneli said. “Today, you can put it on rooftops and parking lots and football fields and unused lands. Tomorrow, with advanced technologies, it will be in building materials, it will be on road surfaces, it will be sort of everywhere.”

Smith said there is a place for both. “Wind tends to produce more from a single grid connection and solar tends to be more distributed and provides a lot of grid flexibility and functional flexibility.”

Thomas noted that San Diego’s peak load is moving to later in the day, when solar without storage becomes “a lower value resource” to his utility. As to wind’s nighttime production, he said, “we’re trying to lead the way in San Diego to electric vehicles and that excess energy resource will be available to charge those cars at night.”

“Off-peak markets can become saturated with wind energy,” Barmack said, and solar both fails to help system operators with “load peak” and causes them trouble with its “huge ramps.” But “some resources,” he added without mentioning geothermal’s 24/7 output, “can actually be controlled.”

Clavenna asked if renewables standards or solar’s competitiveness is driving their business decisions.

“Investments have to stand on their own and make good sense,” Smith said. “The RPS informs business decisions, but is only one factor.”

“It’s the RPS,” SDG&E’s Thomas said. “Everything rolls up into that.”

“The RPS helps us find a buyer for the things we’re developing and building on the supply side,” said Corneli. Policy, he explained, “has been and continues to be instrumental in doing what we do to compete, to innovate, to figure out how to bring costs down and get projects done quicker, to improve the bankability [and do] the things that are driving the cost down.” When NRG invests in solar, “we think about the current return,” he said, “but we also think about the future where it is going to be a technology of choice.”

Clavenna next asked about the role of storage.

SDG&E expects to be testing “eight storage devices by the end of this year,” Thomas said. “We see a lot of opportunity there but we don’t have a price signal to help that market mature,” he added. “Why would you put in a battery storage device if you’re getting those services -- net metering and balancing -- at no cost from the utility?”

“If we fast-forward to this conference five years from now," Smith predicted, “half of the agenda is going to be storage.”

“When it is cheaper to have batteries in your house than it is to build a peaking plant and it is cheaper to put solar on your roof than it is to build a combined-cycle unit,” imagined Corneli, “it will be just hugely transformative and it really calls for redefining of the role of the grid and the distribution system.”

GE Still Dominates US Wind Manufacturing but New Faces Are Emerging

2012-05-01T18:00:45+00:00

GE remains the dominant supplier of wind turbines to the U.S. domestic market, but competitors are coming at it from every direction of the globe.

GE turbines are generating 40 percent -- or 18,873 megawatts -- of the 48,770 megawatts of installed U.S. wind energy capacity. That is 12,519 turbines averaging about 1.5 megawatts each.

Vestas Wind Systems A/S of Denmark made 19 percent, or approximately 9,154 megawatts, of the turbines generating U.S. installed capacity. That’s 6,996 turbines averaging under 1.3 megawatts each.

Siemens A.G. of Germany is third with 11 percent -- 5,330 megawatts -- of U.S. capacity, with 2,511 turbines at an average 2.1-megawatt size.

Of the 6,816 megawatts of wind capacity installed in the U.S. in 2011, GE led with 29.4 percent (2,006 megawatts from 1,252 turbines). Vestas was close behind, with almost 29 percent (1,969 megawatts from 952 turbines). Siemens was again third, with just over 18 percent (1,233 megawatts, 534 turbines).

The real news is the wind industry’s growing list of manufacturers supplying the domestic turbine market. It grew more in 2011 than in any year since 2008. Among other newcomers were Goldwind and Sinovel, two of China’s biggest wind makers. And while manufacturers who were outside the top ten list added only 0.05 percent of U.S. installed wind capacity in 2007, their share of it in 2011 was over 5.5 percent.

Furthermore, while there were only seven manufacturers with over 1,000 megawatts of U.S. installed capacity (GE, Vestas, Siemens, Mitsubishi, Gamesa, Suzlon and Clipper), there were nine manufacturers last year that added over 150 megawatts to it (Nordex and RePower).

The average size of all turbines installed in the U.S. also took its biggest jump since 2008, moving from 1.77 megawatts to 1.97 megawatts. This strongly suggests that GE’s workhorse 1.5-megawatt machine and others in its class, while still dominant in terms of sheer numbers built, no longer represent the industry standard. Turbines of 1.8 megawatts and 2.3 megawatts also represented a large percentage of those installed in 2011, and both 2.3-megawatt and 3.0-megawatt turbines were also built in significant numbers last year.

The U.S. wind turbine manufacturing industry and its supply chain had 472 facilities at the end of 2011. But the industry has already seen layoff announcements and cancellations of plans for new facilities from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Vestas and others, due to Congress' decision not to extend the industry’s 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour production tax credit (PTC).

GE Is Watching Your Wind Turbine

2012-04-30T14:00:40+00:00

In upstate New York, a staff of 30 technicians is monitoring 6,000 wind turbines around the globe 24 hours a day. This is GE’s Remote Operations Center (ROC). There's another ROC in Salzbergen, Germany. Between the two ROCs, GE monitors more than 6,000 turbines and keeps the GE wind machine fleet at a claimed 98 percent availability.

I spoke with newly promoted Andy Holt, the General Manager of Renewable Energy Services at General Electric (NYSE: GE) Energy last week about this convergence of IT and energy technology.

GE has built about 50 percent of the wind turbines in the U.S. and uses IT to maximize turbine efficiency and improve the cost and reliability of wind power.

Technicians in the ROC monitor the turbine fleet for faults or failures while an additional team of engineers uses a software and communications package that identifies anomalies in a turbine’s operation with the goal of detecting and correcting issues before they turn into a failure. Technicians on the ground at a wind farm are alerted by the remote monitoring teams and can make adjustments to the turbines before a failure occurs or immediately afterwards. Holt was struck by the staff of the ROC as "unsung heroes" that are "always there" and "don't get a lot of recognition."

GE claims that most turbine faults it spots are resolved in less than ten minutes. Holt said the wind turbine monitoring used here is similar to what GE does at its sister businesses in gas engines, steam turbines, and jet engines. "Our system gathers gigabytes of data -- the secret sauce is turning that into information," said Holt.

Typical wind turbine warranties are two years, followed by a service contract modeled on an operating life of 20 years.

GE’s diagnostic software identifies issues at wind farms thousands of miles away down to specific turbines and very specific faults. GE claims its remote capabilities can add $15,000 to $20,000 per wind turbine, per year, to a customer’s bottom line by identifying under-producing wind turbines. GE cites an example where one turbine out of 200 at a wind farm in Illinois was underperforming. When technicians checked the turbine’s settings, they determined that the angle of the three wind blades were off by about 15 degrees and rectified the misalignment.

GE Energy -- made up of GE Power & Water, GE Energy Management and GE Oil & Gas -- employs more than 100,000 people globally and had 2010 revenues of $38 billion.

Holt acknowledges there is some uncertainty in the 2013 wind market because of the loss of the Production Tax Credit (PTC). But, he added, "We know for sure there are 60 gigawatts of wind installed in the U.S. and the turbine doesn't know if the PTC is on or off. We need to run the machines like we own them."

Here's a screenshot of PulsePOINT software that shows information on the temperature of the battery boxes in two different wind turbines on a wind farm. The blue line shows a turbine running at a significantly higher temperature than another turbine in the fleet, as well as the data after the issue was corrected by a field technician.

China Grid Slowdown Hurts Siemens, ABB

2012-04-27T17:00:51+00:00

The smart grid industry’s malaise so far this year has a decidedly international flavor to it. Along with the post-stimulus slowdown in the United States and Europe’s ongoing economic crisis, we’ve apparently got slowdowns in orders from would-be next-generation growth markets like China and India to deal with.

Those are some conclusions to draw from a flurry of bad first-quarter financial news for the smart grid this week. One of the biggest came from Siemens, which lowered its 2012 profit guidance on Wednesday from 6 billion euros ($7.95 billion) to between 5.2 billion and 5.4 billion euros ($6.9 billion to $7.1 billion), based on slowdowns both in European offshore wind power and in Chinese grid equipment.

The biggest hit was Siemens’ 278-million-euro charge for delays in North Sea wind power transmission projects, which came on top of a 203 million euro ($266.4 million) charge earlier in the year. But it was China that drove the company’s only regional revenue decline, with a 6 percent drop in revenues compared to a global increase of 9 percent.

A report from Standard Chartered bank says that Siemens’ orders from China fell 12 percent in the first quarter. Nor is Siemens the only grid giant finding China a tougher market -- rival grid giant ABB saw a 35-percent decline in Chinese sales in March, the report stated.

ABB managed to exceed analysts expectations slightly by reporting $1.05 billion in first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, but still saw its stock fall by as much as 4 percent after reporting the bad news from China.

Nor is China the only emerging smart grid market seeing signs of a slowdown. Siemens also saw a whopping 58-percent drop in orders to India, which is a much less mature, but still massive, market behind China, Standard Chartered reported.

China and India are also very competitive in terms of pricing, a factor which could have driven Siemens’ revenue decline in China. Likewise, ABB’s first-quarter revenue growth was driven by cost cutting to make up for weaker pricing, the company reported.

China is, of course, the single biggest future smart grid market in the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars going into high-voltage DC and AC transmission lines to carry wind power from west to east, hundreds of millions of smart meters to be deployed over the next decade, and scores of integrated smart grid-smart city projects underway, featuring partners like GE, IBM, Cisco, Intel and the three aforementioned grid companies, testing energy storage, plug-in electric vehicles, solar panels and other stuff.

But China’s economy has also shown increasing signs of strain. China reported economic growth of 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 -- a figure to be envied by most, but a two-year low. Signs of a bursting bubble in real estate have analysts worried that a broader contraction may only be beginning.

In other international smart grid news, Schneider Electric reported last week that first-quarter sales grew 9.4 percent to 5.41 billion euros ($7.12 billion), though that was almost entirely driven by revenues from acquisitions. ABB has been matching Schneider’s appetite for smart grid companies, and Siemens is catching up.

And smart meter giant Itron posted first-quarter earnings Wednesday that missed analysts’ expectations, driven by growing costs for R&D and international development. The news led to some analyst downgrades on Itron’s stock, though those analysts agreed that Itron’s biggest test will come later this year, when it becomes clear just how much of Europe’s mandate-driven smart meter business it can expect to secure.

Utility Deals Down (Slightly) in 2012

2012-04-26T04:00:05+00:00

During the first quarter of 2012, mergers and acquisitions in the North American power and utility sector declined, according to an industry snapshot from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The lower rate of M&A activity is due to several factors, according to the report, including the pending mergers between some of the nation's top utilities. However, the lull is likely temporary, according to John McConomy, U.S. Power and Utilities Transaction Services Leader for PwC.

“Many factors were responsible for the dearth of deal announcements during Q1 2012, including the continuing weak economy, lack of load growth, the regulatory process on two large deals announced in 2011, changing national environmental proposals and the price of natural gas,” he said in a statement. “On the plus side, there appears to be continued progress on the regulatory approvals on regulated utility transactions. Successful approvals may lead to a revival of transactions in the regulated space.”

The volume of deals in 2012 was slightly higher than in 2011, with 31 deals total and five over $50 million in the first three months of this year. The largest deal was Cascade Acquisition Sub, a unit of Fortis Inc., acquiring CH Energy Group Inc., a Poughkeepsie-based electric utility, for about $1.5 billion.

Of course, that deal is downright small potatoes compared to the recent Exelon and Constellation Energy merger, which will create a company with a market cap of $34 billion. Then there’s Duke Energy’s awaited $26 billion merger with Progress Energy, which would make it the largest utility in the United States in terms of generation capacity.

So far, it is tough to tell what the mega-mergers will mean for smart grid plans. There is clearly a place for synergies and shared best practices across large companies. But as Duke and Progress await regulatory approval, there does not appear to be any new significant projects until the merger is finalized.

As Greentech Media noted when the Exelon/Constellation deal was finalized, the real benefit could be in the backend of offices, and particularly in streamlining growing IT needs. Balancing supply and demand using higher levels of demand response could be another benefit, especially for Exelon, which picked up a dynamic demand response program when it merged with Constellation.

The Duke-Progress merger could be a while, however. The two utilities have been working through issues to satisfy the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which conditionally approved the merger in September.

Although some utilities and investors may be watching to see what happens with Duke-Progress, not everyone is sitting on the sidelines. Northeast Utilities recently completed a $5 billion purchase of NStar, after a year and a half of regulatory review. The utility will now serve 3.5 million gas and electricity customers across New England.

In the case of Northeast Utilities, one of the agreements was that the utility would buy some of the power from the proposed Cape Wind project. But the large investment in wind is likely slowing overall with the expiration of tax credits. "We expect to see a slowdown in wind project development as the product tax credit approaches expiration," added Jeremy Fago, PwC’s U.S. power and utilities valuation services leader. "We’re also seeing unscrubbed coal facing tougher retrofitting investment decisions as natural gas prices continued their downward trend."

In Connecticut, there were other demands including $300 million for system improvements, according to reports.

For the New England states, the mergers were a chance to increase transparency with the utilities and to increase the reliance on renewable energy, including existing hydro from further north. Other states that will be faced with mega-utility mergers in coming years will be able to use the transaction to push their utilities toward cleaner energy and grid investment in a way that is potentially more efficient than a traditional regulatory process.

Fracking and the Natural Gas “Shale Gale”

2012-04-24T15:50:25+00:00

In the real world, outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley's cleantech events and boardrooms, new U.S. energy is not solar power or electrochemical storage, but rather unconventional gas and oil. "Unconventional gas and oil" means horizontal drilling, fracking, and shale gas. There's an enormous amount of reserves, innovation, and investment in this roaring sector.

Extracting shale gas entails a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," which involves blasting through rock with a mix of water, sand and additives to split the shale formation and free the trapped gas.

The abundance of these new resources has been dubbed the "Shale Gale."

The questions are:

Is natural gas a bridge to renewables, as some have said?
Or is natural gas going to slow the momentum of renewables?
What are the true environmental impacts of fracking? Is it safe as milk? -- as Halliburton would have us believe -- or is it a toxic time bomb? There are videos of Haliburton executives drinking the allegedly toxic fracking fluid and there are videos of flaming tap water. What is the truth of the impact of fracking on drinking water?

Vikram Rao, former CTO, Halliburton and the current Executive Director of Research Triangle Energy Consortium (RTEC) said last year that the shale gas supply "is the most important energy event in the U.S. since the discovery of Alaskan oil."

This massive market upheaval has national strategic implications, as well a sobering message for any renewable energy advocate. If you're a solar or energy storage or wind entrepreneur -- you are competing with dirt-cheap natural gas. And it looks like it will remain cheap and abundant for the time being.

The unconventional has become the conventional

Sean Ebert of energy investor Altira Group set the stage for a discussion last week at the Global New Energy Summit in Colorado Springs, CO. Ebert tends not to mince words. He told the audience that unconventional sources is where all the growth in reserves has come from in recent years and that "the unconventional has become the conventional."

"If you're an oil company, where do you look?" asked Ebert. The answer is horizontal drilling, multi-stage fracking, with the use of microseismic monitoring.

He spoke of the "shale gale" unleashed by "cowboys in Northern Texas" at the Barnett Shale. U.S. production started to increase at that moment and "has never turned back." He said, "We're not finding new oil in our typical hunting grounds," adding that we'd seen the end of easy oil, enhanced oil recovery, and oil shale.

Ebert went on to say, "As much maligned as fracking is in the press, we are the envy of the world. When you're talking about energy, you're talking about competitive advantage of nations, and this is where we lead the world."

The same "natural gas swagger" has gone to turn around U.S. oil production, and "the potential for oil is tremendous" in the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Niobrara fields.

Natural gas already provides 21 percent of U.S. electricity right now and the figure will rise to 40 percent by 2035, according to consulting and construction giant Black & Veatch.

Dan Reicher, Executive Director of the Steyer-Taylor Center on Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, has said, "We need the combination of natural gas, renewable energy and energy efficiency," adding "We need to build this bridge between natural gas and renewables."

T. Boone Pickens claims that the United States has natural gas reserves that are equivalent to 700 billion barrels of oil and it is his personal crusade to move that ocean of natural gas into the American transportation sector. He claims to have already spent $62 million on this quest, known as the Pickens Plan.

Carl Pope, former Chairman of The Sierra Club, has spoken of coal and how utilities have powerful incentives to hold on to coal. Pope said, "Renewables and gas are fighting for table scraps while we should go after coal." He urged, "Make sure that the Public Utility Commissions do not allow irrational investments in upgrading 50-year-old coal-fired power plants." Pope suggested, "Run the railroads on natural gas, not diesel; [...] run fleet vehicles on natural gas," and "Replace peakers with fuel cells." He asked, "Can we power locomotives with fuel cells or natural gas?"

Is fracking safe or dangerous?

Peter Duncan, the Executive Chairman and Founder of Microseismic, provides an enabling seismic service to frackers -- the ability to listen to and monitor fracks in real time. It's a passive "stethoscope" rather than a reflective "MRI" sensor, with geophones providing a map of fracking activity two miles below the earth's surface. Duncan said that the array of geophones just listens to the "squishy sounds" below the surface. It's this type of technology innovation that has made fracking successful in the U.S.

(See Microseismic's video below.)

According to the video narration, "The fractures are contained within a few feet hundred feet of the well bore, which is 3000 feet below the surface. This is important because it contradicts a common misconception that fractures can propagate thousands of feet toward the surface, causing water and air contamination."

Jason Bryant, the Environment Solutions Tenet Manager at Halliburton, spoke on the topic of hydraulic fracking fluid. Halliburton is a service provider to the hydraulic fracking industry and made the case that the fluid injected into these reservoirs is safe for the environment and peoples' health -- despite the claims of the media and Hollywood.

Bryant said, "There are a couple of reasons why we are able to produce from these reservoirs: directional drilling and multiple zones of hydraulic fracturing to supply more flow paths to the well." The other enabler of the fracking process is the fluid itself, which Bryant claimed was made up of 99 percent water and sand. The remaining one percent can include a gelling agent, a breaker, a crosslinker, a surfactant, and a biocide. The biocide is used to inhibit microbial growth at the gelling agent and is considered safe for contact with skin. However, the firm is looking to "remove the biocide from the equation," perhaps with an ultraviolet treatment.

He claimed that Halliburton had "tried to create a hydraulic fracturing fluid with tight environmental constraints," adding that they "looked to the food industry" for ingredients you "can find in ice cream, candy, and bread." By this, Bryant was talking about the guar gum typically used as gelling agent. (As a side note, the price of the guar gelling agent, an Indian import, has shot through the roof, prompting Texas farmers to enter the guar market.)

Halliburton continues to look for methods to stimulate the reservoir with less energy and less chemical intensity, with more efficient ways of recycling the water and minimizing waste.

Former Clinton CIA Director and pioneering electric car advocate R. James Woolsey has said, “The complexity is the fracking water," adding, "There are good ways to do it and there are technologies. But the companies haven’t done a decent job of educating the public or the environmentalists,” which threatens, he said, natural gas’s potential as “a great transitional fuel for moving toward renewables.”

Janie M. Chermak, Professor of Economics at the University of New Mexico, noted that "horizontal wells behave very differently from vertical wells," adding, "As we go forward, we need better information on the topic -- and more accurate information." She observed that if you read a newspaper article about hydraulic fracturing. "It's either for or against." She recommended a UT Austin report on the facts and fictions of fracking amidst the 67 percent negative impression the public has of the process.

The study by UT Austin finds that the process isn't to blame, but rather that the operators aren't doing it right. The report has found that fracking itself does not contaminate, but doesn't address the returned water. (ConocoPhillips has made grant contributions to UT Austin's energy research.)

There is a large anti-fracking sentiment, recently expressed in the movie Gasland. According to Dr. Ronald Bishop in Affirming Gasland, the additives such as crosslinkers and breakers are "extremely toxic." Guar gum is sometimes mixed with “hydrotreated light petroleum distillates” or deodorized kerosene.

Arguments against fracking for environmental and health reasons abound. Some evidence points to the fouling of aquifers and drinking water, as well as the environmental impacts of the often undisclosed chemical additives. Here is a link to an anti-fracking Facebook page calling for a global ban.

Here's a trailer from Natural Gas Exxposed:

According to The Oil Drum, the water needed for hydraulic fracturing and the disposal of produced load water are both becoming serious obstacles for Marcellus Shale development. The problem with water sourcing is not availability, but getting water management plans approved for the high-volume withdrawals (drilling requires about 100,000 gallons and completions use another 3 million to 4 million gallons). There are few waste treatment plants, and the cost of transporting disposal water from the well may add $250,000 to the cost.

The politicians are getting involved

President Obama just signed "Executive Order -- Supporting Safe and Responsible Development of Unconventional Domestic Natural Gas Resources," which acknowledges the importance of natural gas but seeks to provide oversight over the unconventional fuel and the controversial mining methods.

New York State has a moratorium on fracking, although efforts to use liquid propane gas as the active fluid might get around the moratorium. France has banned the practice.

There are thousands of active shale gas wells in the U.S. and thousands more being added each year. That translates to billions of gallons of water and tons of additives used in the fracking process, along with millions of lives touched positively and negatively by this new -- and not fully vetted -- technology.

High Altitude Wind Demo From Altaeros (With Video)

2012-04-20T14:10:05+00:00

Altaeros Energies employs aerospace technologies to lift a small wind turbine to 1,000 feet off the ground where the wind is stronger. The power produced by the airborne wind turbine (AWT) is sent to the ground via conductors with the unit tethered to the earth.

The MIT-, Harvard-, and Air Force-trained team at Altaeros just completed a test of a power-producing prototype which actually works, and lifted a wind turbine 350 feet off the ground to generate double the power at high altitude than at typical tower height. The test in the video was completely automated, according to co-founder, Adam Rein -- unpiloted and able to "lift, generate, and land without any active controls." These tests took place in the middle of winter in northern Maine.

The Air Force still uses tethered helium inflatable technology -- called aerostats, the industrial cousins of blimps -- on project construction. So, the inflatable technology is not entirely new.

Here's the video:

Rein notes that the company uses an "off-the-shelf" 2.5-kilowatt, 3.7-meter, 3-blade wind turbine merged with helium inflatables that have lifted radar systems for decades. The unit is rated to go to about 1,000 feet in the boundary layer. The tallest terrestrial wind turbine is 350 feet high.

Altaeros looks to deploy the units in off-grid and hard to reach spots such as military bases, remote villages, oil and gas sites, eventually even off-shore applications. Power in those areas is typically diesel gensets with an expensive price tag of getting the diesel delivered and a total cost of $0.50 to $0.75 per kilowatt-hour. Altaeros claims it cost will be "a third of that."

Lending itself to these remote sites, the unit AWT is "really easy and cheap to set up," according to Rein, and "the whole system packs down to smaller than a compact car."

Regulatory bodies and the powers that be are beginning to recognize the existence of this new technology. The FAA has put out draft regulations for high-altitude tethered wind turbines. Rein claims the AWT design can overcome some of the challenges of traditional types wind turbines -- making them quieter with less bird and radar impacts. Garrad Hassan, a leading wind consultancy, has taken a look at the technology as well.

However, technical, regulatory, financing, and environmental risks remain for this alluring technology.

Altaeros is funded by private seed investors, the USDA, and the CEC. Other players in this field include Makani Power, SkyWind Power, Magenn, Ampyx, KiteGen -- also exploring this part of the atmosphere.

The Networked Grid 100: The Movers and Shakers of the Smart Grid in 2012

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As the smart grid market continues to move from the fundamental ‘blocking and tackling’ of infrastructure and communications build-out to a wide swath of new, advanced applications ranging from consumer behavior analytics, to next-gen control and protection, to greentech integration and grid optimization, we thought it helpful to once again call attention to those leading the charge. The global upgrade to Grid 2.0 has billions, if not trillions, of dollars, euros, yen and yuan on the table, as well as the future safety and security of our power grids, and it is not a job for the faint of heart. Luckily, the folks on this list are all on top of it. Are these folks in your Rolodex? If not, they should be.

For a comprehensive understanding of the companies leading the global smart grid market, please refer to The Networked Grid 150: The End-to-End Smart Grid Vendor Ecosystem Profiles and Rankings report. Lastly, if you are hoping to meet many of the Top 100 Movers and Shakers to both introduce yourself and get autographs, the best place to do that is at the upcoming 4^th annual Networked Grid conference.

Sharon Allan, Partner, Accenture

As head of Accenture’s North American smart grid practice, Sharon Allan has led the consultancy into a leading position in utility deployments, with 9,300 employees working in a practice that has completed more than 105 smart grid projects around the world. Allan’s previous positions as President of Elster Integrated Solutions and Chief Knowledge Officer at Elster Electricity certainly give her in-depth knowledge of the industry. Accenture now faces the challenge of helping utilities integrate all their new smart grid technology -- and data -- into their back-office IT systems and broader business processes.

Ron Ambrosio, Global Research Executive for Energy & Utilities Industry, IBM

Ron Ambrosio’s role in guiding the smart grid’s architecture stretches all the way back to 2000, when he helped the Department of Energy create the GridWise Architecture Council, a first for the agency. His current work includes serving as chairman of NIST’s Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) Architecture Committee. At IBM, Ambrosio leads the company’s Energy & Utilities Industry activities in its ten major research facilities scattered around the world, where IBM’s smarter planet initiatives meet cutting-edge research and development.

Massoud Amin, Director, Technological Leadership Institute, University of Minnesota

Massoud Amin has a long and distinguished pedigree in managing smart grid complexity in the real world, stretching back to his work in 1998 on a joint EPRI/Department of Defense project aimed at securing the country’s critical infrastructure. His tenure at EPRI includes managing the research group’s Infrastructure Security, Grid Operations/Planning, and Energy Markets efforts, and coordinating all security-related R&D after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He has collaborated on projects with NASA-Ames, Rockwell International, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, MEMC, ESCO and others.

George Arnold, National Coordinator for Smart Grid, NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is ground zero for the hundreds of standards being developed around the smart grid, and George Arnold, National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability at NIST, is in charge of it all. That includes everything from formulating the ways in which data will be shared in demand response events (OpenADR) and between utilities, customers and third parties (OpenADE), to the overarching rules that pertain to keeping the smart grid private and secure. Arnold also co-chairs the White House National Science and Technology Council’s Smart Grid policy subcommittee.

Guido Bartels, Managing Director, IBM

By day, Guido Bartels is the General Manager of IBM’s Global Energy and Utilities Industry, which oversees Big Blue’s smart grid initiatives. The GridWise Alliance grew six-fold under his chairmanship, and Bartels continues to bring an international focus to smart grid issues as chairman of the Global Smart Grid Federation. Likewise, his work chairing the smart grid subcommittee for the DOE’s Electricity Advisory Committee brings his global perspective to the Obama administration.

Michael Bauer, CEO, Sentient Energy

Michael Bauer leads Sentient Energy, a startup that’s quietly gotten its distribution grid sensor and monitoring technology into a growing number of utility projects, including with integration partner Silver Spring Networks. Foundation Capital is an investor in Sentient, and Bauer served as Entrepreneur in Residence at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the Department of Energy and Foundation Capital. His smart grid experience stretches back to his joining BPL Global in 2005, were he was responsible for product strategy. Before that, he spent over a decade in broadband and video networking in Silicon Valley.

Chad Bell, Senior Director of New Business Solutions Group, Best Buy

Want to know the latest greentech initiatives going on at Best Buy? Talk to Chad Bell. He’s in charge of many of the electronics retailing giant’s key green initiatives, which include sales of Brammo electric motorcycles and charging stations for Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV and Ford’s upcoming line of Focus electric vehicles. Best Buy is also hosting public charging spots as part of The EV Project, the nationwide government-industry car-charging initiative. Recently, Bell has been quoted as saying that Best Buy may even consider hosting the sale of plug-in electric cars built by startups.

Niraj Bhargava, CEO, Energate

Niraj Bhargava, CEO of Energate, has been making a big push into linking energy-smart, smart-grid connected thermostats into homes across North America. The Ottawa-based startup has its thermostats communicating with Silver Spring Networks-connected smart meters with Oklahoma Gas & Electric, and recently launched a commercial rollout of smart thermostats connected to utilities via broadband-to-the-home in Canada’s Ontario province. If the industry is looking for real-world data to determine which mix of communications and utility programs capture the most homeowner involvement with their smart thermostat, Energate is a good place to start.

George Bjelovuk, Managing Director of Enterprise Technology, AEP

AEP is deploying millions of smart meters, distribution grid management systems and energy storage technologies from substation to backyard scale across its territories. George Bjelovuk, managing director of enterprise technology at the multi-state utility, is in charge of putting all those grid pieces together. As project manager of AEP Ohio’s gridSMART project, he’s put the complexities of managing a modern smart grid in terms meant for consumers to understand. Bjelovuk also serves on the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) Governing Board.

Andy Bochman, Founder, The Smart Grid Security Blog

Smart grid cybersecurity: amidst a lot of happy talk on one end of the spectrum, and all the “sky is falling,” worst-case fear-mongering on the other side, it’s hard to know where the truth stands. Andy Bochman’s Smart Grid Security Blog is a must-read for anyone keeping abreast of what the security experts in the field are thinking. Bochman comes to his smart grid cybersecurity credentials via his role as energy security lead at IBM, as well as his contributions to national security working groups on the topic of energy security.

Terry Boston, President & CEO, PJM

Terry Boston, president and CEO of PJM Interconnection, has led the Mid-Atlantic grid operator as it has grown from the nation’s biggest demand response market to breaking new ground in linking the grid to power users. We’ve seen PJM affirm the first uses of energy storage for fast-reacting power markets, as well as cutting-edge virtual power plant technologies. PJM has also taken a stand on a key market dispute with U.S. demand response leader EnerNOC that could have broad ramifications for how the industry develops from this point out.

Andres Carvallo, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Proximetry

Andres Carvallo has brought his technical expertise and next-next-thing vision to the smart grid ever since he coined the term “smart grid” as an alternative to EPRI’s “Intelligrid” concept back in 2003, the same year he joined Texas utility Austin Energy. Carvallo ended up as CIO of the utility, which has broken ground on its smart grid efforts. In March 2010, he left Austin to join Grid Net as executive vice president and chief strategy officer, where he led that company’s move away from strict backing of WiMAX toward supporting LTE and other technologies. In April 2011, he made his most recent move to Proximetry, a startup promising an advanced network management platform to keep the smart grid’s disparate systems running.

Ralph Cavanagh, Co-Director of Energy Programs, Natural Resources Defense Council

The Natural Resources Defense Council has emerged as one of the most stalwart defenders of the smart grid amongst its cohorts in the environmental movement. As long-time energy program director for the NRDC, Ralph Cavanagh has played a key role in that support. For the past 30 years, he’s worked on ways to unite utilities and renewable energy, energy efficiency and other green ideals. He served on the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board from 1993 to 2003, and was appointed to the Secretary’s Electricity Advisory Board in 2008. Most recently, he’s emerged as a strong supporter of smart meter technology to counteract the anti-smart meter backlash growing around the country.

Ed Cazalet, Founder and CEO, TeMIX; Founder, Megawatt Energy Storage

With 35 years of electric power experience as an advisor to industry and government executives, and as a consultant, researcher, developer and entrepreneur, Ed Cazalet has his smart grid chops. His specialty is the interplay of energy markets, smart grid technologies, and renewable generation and energy storage. He is founder and CEO of TeMIX Inc., a transactive systems and services company, as well as many other companies. As vice president of Megawatt Storage Farms, he’s an advocate for California to bulk up its energy storage capabilities to manage the 33 percent of its energy the state expects to get from renewables by 2020. If you want to know how much storage per megawatt of intermittent wind or solar power you need to keep the grid stable -- and how to make it economically feasible -- call Ed.

Paul Centolella, Commissioner, Ohio Public Utilities Commission

Paul Centolella’s role in smart grid isn’t limited to his seat on the Ohio PUC. He also serves as the Secretary of the Organization of PJM States and a member of the NARUC-FERC Smart Grid Collaborative, the NARUC-FERC Demand Response Collaborative, NARUC’s Climate Change Task Force, and the NARUC Energy Resources and Environment Committee. Commissioner Centolella also sits on the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) Governing Board, a technical support forum assisting NIST in standards coordination.

Steven Chu, United States Secretary of Energy

While the Department of Energy’s $4 billion smart grid stimulus may be allocated and flowing out the door, Energy Secretary Steven Chu hasn’t lost his importance to the development of the U.S. smart grid industry. Most notably, this staunch advocate of energy efficiency and clean energy, winner of a Nobel Prize in physics and the former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has spearheaded the DOE’s ARPA-E program, which includes amongst its grant recipients several startups developing energy storage and power electronics technologies that, if brought to fruition, could redefine the smart grid. (P.S. -- When Chu was a research scientist at Berkeley, he reprogrammed his building’s energy management system to make sure his lab temperature didn’t vary, so he knows building energy efficiency first-hand.)

Carlos Coe, Founder, Xtreme Power

Carlos Coe founded and chairs Xtreme Power, a startup with battery solutions for the smart grid space. With the promise of high energy density and capacity with a lead acid-based chemistry that’s far less susceptible to thermal runaway than lithium ion, Xtreme has deployed megawatts of storage systems to back up substations, wind farms and remote grid applications. Coe previously led refrigeration company Anthony International and Whirlpool Corp., but his roots with Xtreme’s technology stretch back to 1986, when he served as general manager and executive vice president of the joint venture between Ford Aerospace and Tracor working on the battery technology that was to become Xtreme Power.

David Cohen, CEO, Infotility

What’s a Grid Agent? For Infotility, the startup acquired by Pacific Controls earlier this year, it’s an intelligent software agent build for the smart grid. Infotility co-founder and CEO David Cohen has decades of experience in bringing the world of distributed computing and energy together, having previously worked for Silicon Energy in developing its Distributed Energy Manager product, used for such systems as ABB’s Virtual Power Plant application. As a member of the GridWise Architecture Council, EPRI’s IntelliGrid project and other research projects, Infotility’s concepts could help form the next generation of smart, distributed energy management systems.

John Cooper, Founder, NextWatt Solutions

John Cooper has been active in the energy, telecommunications, IT services and government research industries since the mid-1980s, leading projects including utility IP networks, wireless AMI, distributed generation, demand response, energy efficiency, utility-scale energy storage, virtual power plants, and EV charging infrastructure. He’s also the co-author of The Advanced Smart Grid: Edge Power Driving Sustainability and author of The ABCs of Community Broadband, a handbook for community leaders, and his white papers and articles on the smart grid could probably fill a book as well.

David Crane, CEO, NRG Energy

NRG Energy has made one of the most aggressive moves into green technology of any U.S. utility, from massive wind and solar power investments to the launch of the country’s first private plug-in vehicle charging networks and its $350 million purchase of Green Mountain Energy in 2010. As CEO, David Crane has led the company’s green push, saying that green energy could be 25 percent of the company’s business by mid-decade. Crane previously served as CEO and COO of U.K. wholesale power generation company International Power, as well as senior vice president of global power for Lehman Brothers in New York and Asia.

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Theodore Craver, President, Chairman and CEO, Edison International

As the chief of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, Ted Craver has a huge influence on how Southern California’s smart grid is evolving. Craver has held that position since 2008, and previously served as chairman and CEO of one of its subsidiaries, Edison Mission Group. He was also named chairman of the board of the Electric Power Research Institute in April 2011, giving him a position to influence the direction of that industry-funded group’s cutting-edge research.

Kevin Dasso, Senior Director, Smart Grid & Technology Integration, Pacific Gas & Electric

Kevin Dasso, a 30-year PG&E veteran, is tasked with integrating the utility’s multiple smart grid projects to deliver benefits that are greater than the sum of their individual parts. Those include such projects as integrating smart meter outage detection capability into PG&E’s ongoing distribution grid enhancement projects, including its $360 million Cornerstone Improvement program, as well as the next generation of distribution automation pilots for voltage regulation and distributed renewables integration. Integrating plug-in vehicle chargers with the smart grid, compressed air energy storage and a home area networking pilot are also on the agenda.

Dan Delurey, President, Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition

As president of the Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition, Dan Delurey is point man for those industries when it comes to seeking support from Congress and federal regulators. Delurey’s roots in coalition-building run deep: he’s also executive director at the Association for Demand Response and Smart Grid (ADS), a nonprofit organization of ISOs, utilities and other parties that share data and expertise among regions and participants in the smart grid and demand response fields. Delurey has more than 25 years of experience in the energy industry, much of it working on demand side issues, policies and programs for the electric industry.

Paul De Martini, Managing Director, Newport Consulting Group

Paul De Martini spent some seven years building Southern California Edison’s smart grid programs as leader of strategic planning, policy development and research and development. In April 2010, he took his industry heft to Cisco’s new push into smart grid, serving as CTO and VP of innovation for connected energy networks, where he took a role in Cisco’s expansion of its ambitions, via partnerships and acquisitions, to become the preeminent networker of the smart grid. His abrupt departure in January 2012 to take up business consulting on the grid architecture and business development strategies he helped develop at Cisco -- along with the departure of Cisco smart grid head Laura Ipsen the next month -- has led some industry observers to question whether Cisco is as serious about the smart grid as it says it is.

Stephan Dolezalek, Managing Director of Clean Tech practice, VantagePoint Venture Partners

As a managing director of VantagePoint Venture Partners’ clean technology group, Stephan Dolezalek oversees one of the broadest portfolios of greentech companies out there. The list is a who’s-who across industry sectors, including solar startups MiaSolé and BrightSource Energy, for which Dolezalek serves as board member, and green transportation challengers Better Place and Tesla Motors. On the smart grid side, VantagePoint has backed smart grid networking startup Trilliant and home energy management contestants Tendril Networks and AlertMe.

Eric Dresselhuys, Vice President, Markets, Silver Spring Networks

Eric Dresselhuys has been with Silver Spring Networks since it was founded in 2002, and has watched the startup take a leading position in smart meter networking in North America. While the company hasn’t yet taken the plunge of IPO, it has been quite active in the past few months, raising an additional $24 million from EMC and $30 million from Hitachi and forming strategic partnerships with both companies, as well as announcing some big new projects with Commonwealth Edison and Progress Energy, among others. Will 2012 be the year it finally takes the IPO plunge?

Mike Edmonds, Vice President of Strategic Solutions, S&C Electric Company

As S&C’s vice president of Strategic Solutions, Mike Edmonds is responsible for the strategy, direction and execution of S&C’s portfolio of solutions families. Prior to joining S&C in April 2010, Edmonds was vice president & general manager of Siemens USA Energy Automation group, responsible for the real-time solutions business for energy management systems, market systems, substation automation and protection control. Edmonds’ previous roles include vice president & general manager for PTI, whose products and services serve 130 countries in system planning, including early adoption and endorsement of the common information model (CIM). As intelligence continues to get pushed further and further to “the edge” of the grid, expect Mike’s team at S&C to continue to be in a leadership position with both best-of-industry technology and expertise.

John Estey, CEO, S&C Electric

As CEO of Chicago-based S&C Electric Company, John Estey leads a company on the forefront of distribution automation and energy storage management technology for the smart grid. As a liaison between the smart grid industry and policymakers, Estey has been tapped in the past to brief the White House on smart grid matters, and also sits on the board of directors of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.

Ahmad Faruqui, Principal, Brattle Group

Ahmad Faruqui is a leading expert at the intersection of the smart grid and power consumers, including residential time-of-use and dynamic pricing and commercial and industrial demand response programs. He has helped the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission prepare a National Action Plan for Demand Response, and has testified before utility commissions across the U.S. on the ins and outs of bringing time-of-use pricing to residential customers, a move that could realize the promise of the mass market smart grid -- or cause some enormous political problems.

Gary Fromer, Senior Vice President of Demand Response, Constellation Energy

Gary Fromer was CEO of C-Power, the demand response company that was bought by Constellation Energy in 2009. Since then, he has led Constellation’s efforts on the demand response front, which include an interesting combination of classic centrally controlled and managed demand management, as well as pushing control to their customers via the company’s VirtuWatt software platform. Constellation also trades energy for itself and on behalf of its clients, which presents the company with a different set of incentives and imperatives when it comes to demand response.

Matt Gillmore, Enterprise Architect, Consumers Energy

As Director of Enterprise Architecture at Consumers Energy, Matt Gillmore’s responsibilities include enterprise information models, application architecture, network architecture for wide area networks, AMI networks, home area networks, and distributed device management. Consumers Energy has put together an unusual plan to link residential smart meters via cellular networks, using SmartSynch as lead contractor and GE, Qualcomm and Grid Net as partners. Gillmore has over 11 years of IT systems development and architecture experience at Consumers Energy, was a key contributor to the OpenHAN system requirements specification and chairs the SG-Network task force within the UCA International Users Group, along with the IP Suite Working Group for the SGIP.

Thierry Godart, President, North American Smart Grid Division, Siemens

As leader of Siemens’ North American smart grid division, Thierry Godart has a bird's-eye view on the German giant’s push to add smart grid IT smarts to its operations might, all to the purpose of creating a business out of smart grid integration. Siemens purchase of eMeter brought it meter data management software, while its partnership with TIBCO is aimed at fine-grained demand response, down to the building management systems that Siemens happens to provide. Godart’s past work as senior vice president at energy industry IT services company Nexant gives him the deep IT expertise Siemens will require to make good on its integration goals.

Jeff Gooding, IT General Manager of Smart Grid Engineering, Southern California Edison

Jeff Gooding is responsible for Southern California Edison’s SmartConnect project, the multi-million smart meter deployment that’s earned accolades around the country. Prior to joining SCE in 2003, Gooding was a senior manager in the Advanced Development & Integration division of CapGemini’s Utilities practice, and previously worked as an architect and technologist on projects at the California ISO, Ontario IMO, Portland General Electric and PG&E, giving him cross-country expertise in utility integration.

James Goodnight, Founder and CEO, SAS

As one of the world’s major enterprise business analytics software vendors, SAS has the kind of expertise that utilities are going to need to bring their new smart grid systems into integration with the rest of their IT operations. James Goodnight, who worked for NASA’s Apollo program before founding SAS in 1976, understands the challenges of managing complex systems. SAS has been expanding its energy forecasting, trading and risk management systems for utilities to back up their latest smart grid deployments. There’s big data to manage out there in the smart grid, and SAS will be managing it.

Erich Gunther, Chairman, CTO and Co-Founder, Enernex

Erich Gunther and the team at Enernex are a mainstay of the smart grid industry, but behind the scenes, in the deep technical details. Whether it’s the latest developments in federal standards or a review of the last few decades of technological development within the utility industry, Enernex consults with some of the world's largest utilities and vendors on how to plan, architect, deploy, test and scale smart grids from end to end. Gunther was part of the original team that developed EPRI’s IntelliGrid Architecture and helped oversee its development through its first major application at Southern California Edison for the utility's AMI and Smart Grid programs.

Mozhi Habibi, Strategy Manager, Emerging Solutions at IBM

Ms. Habibi leads IBM's emerging energy and utility solutions outside the existing solution set by assessing the white space market opportunities. She has more than 15 years of experience in the energy software industry with emphasis in global marketing, go-to-market strategy development, strategic alliances, business development, and product marketing. While IBM has already displayed an unmatched war chest for new analytics companies in the past few years with a wide range of acquisitions, don’t be surprised if Ms. Habibi and company continue to both pluck the best soft grid and data analytics companies, as well leverage the company’s hefty in-house expertise.

Becky Harrison, Smart Grid Director, Progress Energy

Harrison’s role as smart grid director of Progress Energy gives her oversight of the Southeastern utility’s cutting-edge projects, such as its conservation voltage reduction program and its multi-million smart meter rollout, backed by a $200 million Department of Energy stimulus grant. Harrison’s role as a director and finance chair of both the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative and the GridWise Alliance gives her a view on the latest developments in managing the rollout of smart grid technologies in the eyes of utility customers.

Steve Hauser, VP Grid Integration, NREL

Steve Hauser's job at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory is to lead national efforts to create a smarter grid. To that end, he’s been setting up new programs and partnerships for causes ranging from renewable power-grid integration to standards consensus-building. He was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the GridWise Alliance, and previously held senior positions at GridPoint, SAIC, and Battelle, as well serving as chairman of The World Renewable Energy Congress.

Chris Hickman, Founder, Innovari

Chris Hickman has been in the utility industry for decades, and brings that experience to bear as he urges utilities to rethink their relationships with their customers and regulators. After his most recent roles at SureGrid and Ice Energy, Hickman’s latest endeavor, Innovari, seeks to bring together innovation and energy to create new business models to bring demand-side technology effectively into the market.

Patricia Hoffman, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, DOE

Patricia A. Hoffman was named the Assistant Secretary at the DOE in June 2010, after being the acting Assistant Secretary until then. She has played a key role in managing the $4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds that have been handed out to utilities and private, public and institutional partners, and also works closely with NIST and NERC on other issues such as cybersecurity on the grid.

Doug Houseman, Vice President of Technology and Innovations, Enernex

GTM Research favorite Doug Houseman has a hand in guiding smart grid technology development on multiple fronts, not least as head of technology and innovations at smart grid consultancy Enernex. He’s also a member of the NIST/EPRI smart grid framework architecture team and helped develop the NIST smart grid framework model. He is also a member of IEEE with a lead role in the standard body’s Intelligent Grid Coordinating Committee. You can also always count on him speaking his mind -- and putting to rest any incorrect assumptions you may have about the future of the smart grid.

Craig Ivey, President, Consolidated Edison

As president of Consolidated Edison, Craig Ivey is overseeing a host of smart grid projects seeking to modernize a massive urban grid infrastructure and integrate millions of New York City power customers with their utility -- not exactly an easy task. Before joining ConEd in 2009, Ivey had spent 24 years at Dominion Virginia Power, where he served as senior vice president of electric delivery and senior vice president of transmission and distribution.

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Linda Jackman, VP Product Management, Oracle Utilities

Australia native Linda Jackman leads Oracle’s push to spread its utility business to the smart grid, starting from its foundation in managing backend meter data integration and customer billing systems. With more than 20 years of experience in information systems specializing in capital-intensive industries, Jackman certainly knows the ins and outs of delivering data for mission-critical utility systems -- like making sure the bills are done correctly and on time. But Oracle’s smart grid efforts aren’t limited to the backend. It’s also involved in some of the most innovative pilots in consumer-facing smart grid, like the Pecan Street Project and San Diego Gas & Electric’s Borrego Springs microgrid project.

Larsh Johnson, Founder and CTO, eMeter

It’s been a busy year for the company that Johnson founded. The meter data management company closed out a big year of growth by being acquired by Siemens -- a move that cements the market strength that GTM Research cited when it named it a top U.S. MDM provider in 2010. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company also broke ground on cloud-based meter management via a partnership with Verizon, and has been rolling out advanced analytics features to make more use of data, whether from smart meters or other smart grid devices.

Paul Kalv, Electric Director, Leesburg Electric

As electric director for the city of Leesburg, Fla., Paul Kalv has led the municipal utility into smart grid deployments from smart meters to transmission upgrades to help reduce the city’s power rates from their dubious distinction of being among the country’s highest. Leesburg has also taken on General Electric’s smart grid as a service offering to manage its deployment. Kalv is also Vice Chairman of the Florida Municipal Power Agency, and has spent the past 20 years of his 40-plus years of utility experience in the municipal utility sector.

Aseem Kapur, Department Manager Smart Grid Implementation Group, Consolidated Edison

Aseem Kapur’s task is a complicated one: rolling out smart grid technology to the country’s biggest metropolis. ConEd’s smart grid plans include substation monitors, automated switches and capacitor automation devices for 850 feeder lines, tapping Siemens and TIBCO to deploy an integrated smart grid solution for the city, and deploying several Department of Energy stimulus grant-funded projects to test the integration of greener energy sources, electric vehicles, smart meters and smart building technologies.

Jeffrey Katz, Chief Technology Officer, Energy and Utilities Industry, IBM

Jeffrey Katz has played a big role in IBM’s approach to the smart grid, working on the company’s strategic growth case, the IBM Innovation Jam workshops, and the IBM Intelligent Utility Network initiative. He comes with a deep background in grid and energy technology development, having previously served as manager of the Computer Science department at the U.S. Corporate Research Center of Swiss grid giant ABB, as well as for French power giant Alstom.

Chris King, Chief Regulatory Officer, eMeter

Chris King’s smart grid influence extends beyond his role at leading meter data management technology provider -- and Siemens acquisition -- eMeter. He’s also a nationally recognized expert on smart grid, and is a common sight at government and industry panels. And of course, his Smart Grid Watch blog is one of the most closely watched spots for leading analysis of the smart grid and the energy industry writ large.

Brad Kitterman, President, Aclara

As the new president of Aclara, Brad Kitterman has been tasked with carrying the long-time utility arm of ESCO Technologies into new smart grid roles. Those include its smart metering business, a growing smart meter customer engagement and presentment business with some of the country’s biggest utilities, and a demand response platform partnership with Calico Energy. Kitterman has led his share of companies, including U.S. Pipe & Foundry, LogicaCMG’s North America Energy & Utilities division, and the North American division of Asahi Glass Co., as well as serving as president of Schlumberger’s North American utilities division.

Chris Knudsen, Director, Technology Innovation Center, Pacific Gas & Electric

Chris Knudsen’s job is to coordinate the smart grid deployments and developments of PG&E, a utility leading the pack in smart meter deployment and integration. Knudsen formerly worked as CTO of wireless wide-area networking standards and mobile performance labs at Intel’s mobile wireless group, where he worked on WiMAX development. He also spent three years at Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, focusing on early-stage wireless investments. Here’s someone who knows his WAN from his NAN from his LAN, for sure.

Lee Krevat, Director of Smart Grid, San Diego Gas & Electric

Lee Krevat has been instrumental in guiding SDG&E’s groundbreaking smart grid deployments, from its multi-million smart meter rollouts and advanced distribution grid management and outage management deployments, to cutting-edge, Department of Energy-funded pilot projects for integration of renewable energy, energy storage, plug-in vehicle charging and microgrid technologies. Given that SDG&E has been named most intelligent utility in the U.S. for three years in a row by IDC Energy Insights, there’s little doubt that Krevat’s insights are sought after in the industry.

Shihab Kuran, CEO, Petra Solar

Shihab Kuran wants to reinvent the role of solar power as a utility asset. Petra Solar has been installing a megawatt per month of its utility pole-mounted solar panels, along with the New Jersey-based startup’s power electronics and software to manage it in a way to stabilize the grid and meet utility needs. Kuran previously served as vice president of Fairchild Semiconductor, senior vice president of strategic marketing at Sipex Corp., and other senior positions in the semiconductor industry.

Scott Lang, Chairman, President and CEO, Silver Spring Networks

Yes, yes, we know -- there still hasn’t been an IPO. But that doesn’t mean Silver Spring Networks hasn’t been busy. The company has capped an eventful 2011 with a $24 million investment from EMC and $30 million from Hitachi and by forming strategic partnerships with both companies, as well as announcing some big new projects with Commonwealth Edison and Progress Energy, among others. Lang has put together an impressive management team and board of directors, the most recent addition being Jonathan Schwartz, former President and Director of Sun Microsystems. Although there are many people still waiting for the IPO, Lang might also be grooming Silver Spring for acquisition.

Alex Laskey, Founder and President, Opower

Arlington, Va.-based Opower has taken the utility industry by storm with its behavioral analysis applied to getting homeowners to shift their energy using habits through old-fashioned mailed reports. The tens of millions of homes now interacting with the startup give it plenty of data to analyze, as well as opportunities to link smart thermostat technology from Honeywell and retail cross-promotion via Home Depot. Alex Laskey, Opower’s founder and president, has met with President Barack Obama to discuss green jobs, and comes to the greentech field via his role as a campaign manager, strategist and public opinion analyst for several candidates nationwide, as well as consulting on state ballot measures for The Nature Conservancy, The Trust for Public Land, and The League of Conservation Voters.

Colette Lewiner, Global Lead of Energy, Utilities & Chemicals sector, Capgemini

Colette Lewiner has been involved in Capgemini’s energy and utilities unit since the consultancy’s 2000 acquisition of Ernst & Young Consulting. Since then, Capgemini’s utility business has grown to encompass hundreds of utility customers using its planning systems, as well as managing complex systems integration both on the operations and IT side for utilities like Hydro One, San Diego Gas & Electric and Fortum. Lewiner has cited the growth of intermittent renewable power as a driver for technologies that can instantly balance the grid.

Eric Lightner, Director of Smart Grid Task Force, U.S. Department of Energy

Eric Lightner has a big job at the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability: to ensure awareness, coordination and integration of smart-grid-related activities, both with the Department of Energy and elsewhere in the federal government. That includes coordinating R&D, standards/protocols, utility regulation, infrastructure development, system reliability and security. Lightner does have 18 years of experience at the DOE as a program manager for advanced technology development, which brings him the experience to make it work.

Barbara Lockwood, Director of Energy Innovation, Arizona Public Service

Barbara Lockwood’s job involves managing the orchestration of smart grid, renewable energy and technology innovation efforts at Phoenix-area utility Arizona Public Service. It’s a natural evolution of her role at APS, where she has served as founding director for APS’ smart grid and renewable energy efforts. Lockwood is also on the board of directors of the GridWise Alliance and on the Solar Technical Advisory Board for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Wayne Longcore, Chief Solutions Manager, SAP Labs

Wayne Longcore wears a lot of hats in the smart grid industry. Now serving as chief solutions manager for SAP Labs, he previously served as director of enterprise architecture and standards at Consumers Energy, the Michigan utility trying out the United States’ first big cellular-backed smart meter deployment. Longcore is also a member of the GridWise Architecture Council and a governance board member at NIST’s Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), giving him a role in framing the standards that will guide smart grid developments of the future.

Chuck McDermott, General Partner, Rockport Capital

Chuck McDermott gets the distinction of being possibly the only person on the list who is a bona fide rock star, with more than a decade under his belt as a songwriter, performer and recording artist. But these days, McDermott is at Rockport Capital, placing bets on companies such as Comverge, EcoFactor, and Recurve, as well as a recent GE Ecomagination winner, Project Frog. With a heavy mix of distributed generation and energy management, McDermott and his partners at Rockport are making investments on getting the most from the smart grid on all sides.

John McDonald, Director, Technical Strategy and Policy Development at GE Digital Energy

For the past few years, John McDonald has spearheaded a new position at General Electric that is meant to set and drive the vision to keep GE’s Digital Energy at the forefront of the market while also driving collaboration through standards work and industry organization participation. He is a former director of IEEE and has a deep understanding of the problems and opportunities the grid possesses. In his 35 years of experience in the electric utility industry, John has developed power application software for SCADA/EMS and SCADA/DMS, developed DA and load management systems, and has also helped to integrate Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs).

Mark McGranaghan, Vice President of Power Delivery and Utilization (PDU) Sector, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

Mark McGranaghan’s work at EPRI includes some of the research group’s most advanced R&D into the smart grid, a job he’s been doing at his current job, as well as from 2003 to 2008 as Director of Research in the Distribution and Smart Grid areas for EPRI. Prior to joining EPRI, he was vice president at Electrotek Concepts and helped develop power grid systems for McGraw-Edison. He’s an oft-cited expert on the most technical of smart grid’s technical issues, has worked closely with IEEE and IEC on standards development, is a member of the NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Panel Governing Board and is the Vice-Chairman of the CIRED U.S. National Committee.

Philip Mezey, President and Chief Operating Officer, Itron

Philip Mezey’s post at top smart meter vendor Itron affords him a wide view of the coming generation of smart meter deployments and integration. Under his direction, Itron has taken a lead in partnerships with key smart grid players such as Cisco, which is supporting a 2 million Itron smart meter deployment with Canadian utility B.C. Hydro. Itron has also acquired cellular smart meter networking company SmartSynch, with an eye toward broad integration of cellular technologies into Itron’s OpenWay platform. In the meantime, Itron has about 60 million AMR meters in the field, and is looking at ways to bring them into the smart grid fold as well.

Michelle Mindala-Freeman, Vice President of Marketing & Product Management, North America, Landis+Gyr

While some of the technology under the Landis+Gyr name has been around for decades, the smart meter/smart grid communications conglomerate is also taking a leading position in the latest generation of smart meters in Europe and North America. With its $2.3 billion acquisition by Toshiba last year, Landis+Gyr has the financial and technological heft of the electronics and energy giant behind it to accelerate its plans. Michelle Mindala-Freeman is in charge of L+G’s North American operations, and brings experience as the company’s VP of Strategy and Brand and VP of Product Management -- as well as her previous 18 years of experience at Motorola and AT&T -- to the table.

Terry Mohn, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, General MicroGrids

Microgrids are Terry Mohn’s passion. As Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at General MicroGrids Inc., Mohn has launched his latest push to develop technology that allows neighborhoods, campuses, factories and military bases to disconnect from the grid under their own power, as well as lend that power back to the grid. And, as Project Director at the Santa Fe Global Microgrid Center and Co-Chairman of International MicroGrids at the United Nations Foundation, and has his finger on the pulse of key developing markets for the technology. Mohn had 30 years of experience in technology investment, business strategy and large-scale systems architecture, and as chief technology strategist for San Diego Gas & Electric helped deliver that utility’s award-winning smart grid deployments. In 2009 he became Chief Innovation Officer for Balance Energy, a microgrid initiative of BAE Systems' newly formed Smart and Clean Energy group.

LeRoy Nosbaum, CEO, Itron

LeRoy Nosbaum served as CEO of Itron from 2000 to 2009, overseeing the company’s rise to smart meter kingpin status on the global stage. Then he retired, and in his absence, Itron saw its market capitalization and market share struggle in the face of an ongoing recession and competition from rivals such as Landis+Gyr. Itron’s board of directors brought Nosbaum back as CEO in August 2011, and he has since reiterated the company’s goal of growing to $5 billion in sales by 2015 -- and has laid plans to lay off about 750 employees in a broad restructuring.

Michael D. Oldak, VP and General Counsel, Utilities Telecom Council

Michael Oldak is a stalwart advisor to the utility industry. His current position as vice president and general council at the Utilities Telecom Council has given him a front seat on efforts, recently made successful, to open up new 700-megahertz spectrum to utilities that partner with public safety agencies. Oldak previously served as senior director of state competitive and regulatory policies with the Edison Electric Institute, and before that served as regulatory counsel for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, giving him insight into what small rural co-ops need in smart grid support.

John Palmour, CTO, Cree

As co-founder and CTO of one of the biggest companies around in LED technology, John Palmour is someone you must talk to if green lighting is part of your smart grid plan. Palmour has been integral to Cree’s business development and research into wide bandgap RF, microwave and power switching devices. Cree has been fielding integrated LED devices as part of its colonization of the potential LED market, and has been acquiring startups in the space at a rapid pace to keep its technology fresh.

Naimish Patel, CEO, GridCo Systems

Naimish Patel leads GridCo Systems, a company pioneering the use of solid state power electronics to revolutionize the way electricity is managed from generation to consumption. The stealthy startup raised $12.5 million last year, and while it’s been secretive about its goals, Patel has spoken of reducing the magnetics in solid-state transformers to bring down costs on what’s otherwise a great improvement on traditional transformers in terms of power density, adaptability, and performance. Patel has been an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at General Catalyst Partners and was a founding team member of Sycamore Networks in 1998.

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Michael Peevey, President, California Public Utilities Commission

Michael Peevey’s signature has been on the key rulings the state has written to guide its utilities in their smart grid deployments, and that makes him a power player in the industry. Peevey was appointed CPUC president by then-Governor Gray Davis in 2002, so he’s been around since before the term 'smart grid' was coined. From 1995 until 2000, Peevey was President of NewEnergy Inc., and before that, he was President of massive California utility Edison International and Southern California Edison Company. But that hasn't stopped him from demanding that the state’s big three utilities provide strong smart grid data privacy, security and accessibility to their customers.

Steve Pullins, President, Horizon Energy Group

Steve Pullins heads Horizon Energy Group, a smart grid consultancy based in Knoxville, TN. As part of Horizon’s Modern Grid team, which also includes Joe Miller, Pullins helped first establish the seven key characteristics of a smart grid. He also leads modern grid strategy development for the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). That’s put him to work with more than 20 utilities to help them develop their respective smart grid strategies, renewable strategies, power system optimization operations transformation, RTO/ISO operational processes, and strategic consulting.

Gary Rackliffe, Vice President, Smart Grids Operations, ABB

Gary Rackliffe was appointed to Vice President of Smart Grids North America in May 2009. He leads ABB's Smart Grid initiative in North America, including business development, strategic partnerships, and ABB’s marketing and product strategies. Cutting-edge technologies he’s helped develop include ABB’s Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) for the U.S. and ABB’s Network Management business that provides SCADA/EMS/DMS/OMS and market systems. Rackliffe has over 25 years of industry experience in both transmission and distribution and has worked for ABB for 17 years in Raleigh, N.C. If you’re in town for The Networked Grid, ask him to guide your journeys around the city, including ABB’s new Smart Grid Center of Excellence testing lab.

Saifur Rahman, founding director of the Advanced Research Institute at Virginia Tech

Saifur Rahman has dedicated his professional life to researching cutting-edge energy technologies, including energy efficiency, demand response, renewable energy and microgrid and distributed generation and storage. The latter set of technologies may be particularly applicable to developing economies in India and Africa, and Rahman has experience with such developments as former consultant to the World Bank’s Africa Energy Program. At Virginia Tech, where he is Joseph R. Loring Professor of Electrical Engineering, Rahman founded the university’s Advanced Research Institute, and directs its Center for Energy and the Global Environment. Last summer Virginia Tech announced that it had posted a beta version of its Smart Grid Information Clearinghouse (SGIC) web portal that will provide information related to smart-grid technologies, standards, and rules and regulations.

Luis Ramirez, CEO, GE Energy Industrial Solutions, GE Energy

Luis Ramirez is corporate vice president and CEO of GE Energy Industrial Solutions, which has more than $3.5 billion in annual revenue, 17,000+ employees and more than 60 manufacturing sites around the world. Ramirez has also served as president of GE Energy Parts and GE Energy Rentals and general manager of contractual services at GE Energy. Talk about covering the channels to market. Lately, Ramirez has been on the road promoting GE’s WattStation plug-in vehicle charging station and its solar carport partnership with InnovateUs, as well as promoting the EV concept via the GE Electric Vehicle Experience Tour.

John Rappaport, Chairman and Founder, USNAP Alliance

As chairman and founder of the USNAP Alliance, John Rappaport is promoting an industry-wide push to make sure today’s home energy management devices are built to interoperate with the plethora of communications options available today, as well as tomorrow. As Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of Zome Energy Networks, Rappaport is promoting the startup’s new brand of active analytics, energy networking, and smart device-embedded software. Rappaport understands the home-grid nexus from both ends of the market, having served as segment leader of HAN and demand response at Sensus, as well as co-founding 4Home, the home networking startup acquired by Motorola and being deployed as part of Verizon’s home monitoring product.

Jonathan Read, CEO, ECOtality

Jonathan Read believes that the electric vehicle revolution won’t be complete without the networked car charging infrastructure to link plug-in vehicles into the smart grid. ECOtality, the car charging infrastructure startup he co-founded, is taking a build-and-partner approach to spreading its Blink charging network infrastructure around the world, with partners including ABB, Nissan, Ford and the U.S. Department of Energy’s EV Project. Read also founded and led the Park Plaza International hotel chain and served as chairman and CEO of Shakey’s International, giving him experience in growing customer service-oriented companies to international scale.

Wanda Reder, Vice President of Power Systems Services, S&C Electric

Wanda Reder leads S&C Electric’s power systems services, and serves as the global architect for S&C’s global service operations, supporting overseas technical activity analyzing, engineering and constructing smart grid technologies including large-scale batteries, micro grids, and renewable installations. Before joining S&C in 2004, Reder held numerous leadership positions at Exelon and Northern States Power, now Xcel. Reder also chairs IEEE Smart Grid, has served as the president of IEEE Power & Energy Society and is a member of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s Electricity Advisory Committee.

Jim Rogers, CEO, Duke Energy

Jim Rogers has served as chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy since 2006, when Cinergy, the utility he had led for the previous 11 years, merged to make the country’s third-largest utility. Rogers has been an outspoken proponent of the utility industry’s responsibility to push for smart grid, renewable energy and energy efficiency, while also leading Duke into a proposed $26 billion acquisition of Progress Energy, which would create the country’s largest utility. Rogers’ previous experience points to a deep understanding of the economic and policy issues of the energy industry, including working as deputy general counsel for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), as executive vice president of interstate pipelines for the Enron Gas Pipeline Group, and as a partner in the Washington, D.C., law office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Members of the media should know that Rogers also worked for three years as a reporter for the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader.

Pat Ryan, Executive Director, IEEE Power and Energy Society

For the past five years, Pat Ryan has been leading one of the world’s premiere organizations of technical experts on the smart grid. IEEE’s Power and Energy Society is approaching 30,000 members and has more than 300 chapters. Ryan is a principal investigator for the Smart Grid Information Clearinghouse, and he’s also been a key proponent of training and outreach to beef up the utility industry to face a looming workforce challenge, as half of the country’s power engineers will be eligible for retirement in the next five years.

Paul Savage, CEO, Nextek Power Systems

Nextek Power Systems is a startup in the emerging field of powering data centers with direct current systems, a field that includes giants in the industry like ABB and General Electric. It’s also developing technologies to allow LED lights to be powered with rooftop solar panels, and is a member of the EMerge Alliance, a group of companies exploring direct current for a broad set of in-building applications. Savage leads the company’s IP, financial, and partnering strategies, and is also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. Savage’s past experience includes bond trading at CS First Boston and risk management at Lehman Brothers, as well as serving as marketing and customer finance director for the startup operations of the Caterpillar dealership in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Richard Schomberg, EU Vice President of Innovation, Electricite de France (EDF)

Richard Schomberg has spent the past quarter-century holding various management positions in EDF’s research and development programs, and currently holds responsibility for R&D activities and partnerships in North America, as well as smart energy standards across EDF Group. He is chairman of EPRI’s Intelligrid Architecture and Strategy Committee and IEC’s Smart Grid Strategic Group, an emeritus member of the Department of Energy’s GridWise Architecture Council, a member of Southern California Edison’s smart grid technology advisory board. In other words, Schomberg speaks smart grid in many languages.

Howard Scott, Managing Director, Cognyst Advisors

If you’ve been following the smart grid industry for any length of time, you’ve doubtless read, or sought out a copy, of "The Scott Report," the most widely quoted primary market study of the automated metering industry worldwide. That’s Howard Scott’s baby, and represents his work as managing director of Cognyst Advisors, consulting with most of the major metering equipment manufacturers and investors in the world, as well as with the Obama administration’s transition team. Prior to Cognyst, Scott worked a dozen years at Bell Labs and Bellcore developing innovative telecommunications technologies.

Bob Shapard, CEO, Oncor

Bob Shapard has led Texas utility Oncor since 2007, but his background has taken him across Texas’s deregulated energy landscape, with former positions including executive vice president and chief financial officer of Exelon and vice president of finance and treasurer at TXU. Shapard has also worked with TXU’s Australian subsidiary, and had led bioenergy company Covanta through its bankruptcy and oil refiner Ultramar Diamond Shamrock through its merger with Valero, giving him a wide background in broader energy markets. As the current chairman of The Gridwise Alliance, Shapard helps shape the agenda for smart grid advocacy in the halls of Washington, D.C.

Joaquin Silva, President and CEO, On-Ramp Wireless

On-Ramp Wireless is a San Diego, Calif.-based startup bringing technology to extend and deepen the coverage of wireless networks to serve hard-to-reach utility assets in remote regions or under manhole covers and pavement. Prior to founding On-Ramp Wireless, Joaquin was a co-founder of Ostendo Technologies where, as president and COO, he helped develop the company’s unique curved display technology. He previously served as a vice president at the investment banking firm Montgomery & Co., where he led the wireless & semiconductor franchise for the firm for six years. Earlier in his career, Silva was an officer in the United States Air Force.

Nick Sinai, Senior Advisor to the CTO, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Nick Sinai is a venture capitalist and communications policy expert who has taken his experience and contacts to the White House. Sinai is a senior advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he has served the first U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra. Previously, he served as energy and environment director of the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan, which laid out the government’s vision for bringing a nationwide broadband and advanced communications network to the country over the next decade. He also brings his experience as a principal at Tenaya Capital, a senior associate at Polaris Venture Partners and management consultant with Cambridge Strategic Management Group to his role of advising the White House on how to support the private sector in bringing national communications plans to fruition.

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Ivo Steklac, COO, Tendril

Mr. Steklac, a 20+ year industry veteran, is responsible for the day to day operations of Tendril globally, including business development, sales and marketing, product management and development. Most recently Steklac was CEO of Greenbox Technology, a company that provides interactive energy management for the smart home, which was acquired by Silver Spring Networks in late 2009. Previously, he worked as Vice President of Marketing for Energy and Utilities at Schlumberger, and founded Enspiria Solutions, a consultancy and systems integration firm. While Ivo started in a rather limited role at Tendril in 2010, it didn’t take him long to move into the COO chair.

Rick Stevens, VP of asset management, Hydro One

Rick Stevens has been with Hydro One, Ontario, Canada, for 27 years where he currently serves as vice president of asset management. Rick developed the overall business strategy and business case for the deployment of Hydro One’s smart meter program and led Hydro One’s Smart Meter/Smart Grid initiative which involved the rollout of 1.2 million meters. He is a past chairman of the Utilimetrics board of directors.

Dr. J. Kelly Truman,  President & CEO, Deeya Energy

Kelly Truman has been President and CEO of Deeya Energy since 2010, bringing over 25 years of experience in renewable energy, semiconductor manufacturing and thin film technology. Prior to joining Deeya Energy, Kelly was a founding team member and SVP at Solyndra, where he led Marketing, Sales, Business Development, Customer Service, Government Affairs, Intellectual Property and Corporate Communications. He was instrumental in each of Solyndra’s major capital raises, including the now infamous $535M U.S. Department of Energy guaranteed loan. As the cost of solar pv continues to decline, expect the need for the kind of storage products that Deeya offers.

Adrian Tuck, CEO, Tendril

Another GTM Research favorite, Mr. Tuck, as CEO of Tendril, leads the company’s strategic direction and has worked to build both a solid customer base and set of partnerships and investors for Tendril. Previously, Adrian served as both interim CEO and executive vice president of Ember Corporation. As an early advocate of ‘the Internet of Things,’ Adrian was instrumental in the development of the ZigBee standard and served as the vice-chair of the ZigBee Alliance for a number of years. Mr. Tuck currently sits on the board of the GridWise Alliance, and also serves as an advisor to the White House on the topic of the smart grid.

Michael Valocchi, Partner, Global Energy and Utilities Industry, IBM

Michael is responsible for the development and execution of the industry strategy to delivery consulting services as well as the development and direction of the Industry thought leadership at IBM. Prior to this position, Michael was a Business Strategy Partner with IBM Global Services and held a leadership position with another consulting firm.   Michael has 20+ years experience serving energy and utility clients, has proven leadership skills and expertise in financial, strategic, operational and regulatory issues.

Steve Vassallo, General Partner, Foundation Capital

As a General Partner at Foundation Capital, Vassallo has been intimately involved in putting capital into many of the best known, young companies in Smart Grid today, including EnerNOC, Silver Spring Networks, eMeter, and Control4, and now Sentient Energy. With a background in the areas of cleantech, consumer, and software and services, don’t be surprised to see Mr. Vassallo ahead of the pack as new software and data analytics firms start to emerge in the years 2012 to 2015.

Bruce Walker, Partner, Davies Consulting

Mr. Walker is presently a partner in Davies Consulting, a Maryland-based consulting firm that focuses on developing strategies and providing solutions for utilities in emergency management, asset management and grid modernization. He is also the President for SmartSenseCom, a Washington, D.C.-based company providing advanced technology monitoring solutions that facilitate the integration of smarter technology and renewable energy sources. For more than twenty years, Mr. Walker has been an integral part of three investor-owned utilities in the Northeastern United States. In his last utility post, Mr. Walker was the Vice President of Asset Strategy and Policy for National Grid, where he oversaw the development of asset strategies and policies for a $3 billion, five-year capital investment plan. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors for GridWise Alliance, and serves as the Vice Chairman of its Executive Committee. He is a co-founder of the Global Smart Grid Federation (GSGF), a formal collaboration among seven countries to modernize the world’s electric energy system.

Cheri Warren, VP, Asset Management, National Grid

Cheri Warren is currently the VP of asset management at National Grid. Her responsibilities include smart grid, transmission and distribution asset ownership, asset information management and reliability strategy. In 2007, Cheri won the IEEE PES Excellence in Distribution Award for her contributions to electric reliability. Cheri’s career spans more than 20 years and includes extensive experience in electric reliability assessment, asset management, regulatory standards, key customer management, utility operations, distribution design and audits, transmission, power quality, as well as software product development, implementation and integration.

Jon Wellinghoff, Chairman, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

As chairman of the federal agency that exerts regulatory authority over most of the country’s energy industry, Jon Wellinghoff holds a key position in shaping how the smart grid will emerge. Wellinghoff has called demand response the “killer app” of the smart grid, and FERC has backed up that position with rulings that call on the country’s grid operators to reward “negawatts” of demand response on an equal footing with generated power, as well as extra rewards for fast-responding grid balancing technologies. FERC is also seeking authority to fast-track interstate transmission projects to carry renewable energy from windswept prairies and sun-drenched deserts to cities that need it.

Andy White, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Trilliant

Andy took the helm at Trilliant in 2009 after a very long career at GE, which had him moving up the ranks from a GM to Senior Executive to President and CEO of several GE businesses, as well as becoming a GE Corporate Officer in 2002. One of those business lines that he led was CEO of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, and Mr. White is currently Chairman of the World Nuclear Association. While Trilliant has in many respects been overshadowed by Silver Spring Networks, we remain impressed by the company, and wouldn’t be surprised if they are one of the next companies to be snapped up in the ongoing smart grid buying spree, with GE or ABB (both investors) as the most likely candidates.

Steve Widergren, Principal Engineer, PNNL

Steve Widergren is a principal engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Administrator for the GridWise Architecture Council. Prior to joining the Laboratory, he engineered and managed energy management systems products for electric power operations and supported power system computer applications in both supplier and utilities sectors. He has expertise in simulation, control, and system integration and is actively involved in the IEEE Power Engineering Society as well as participating in a broad range of standards efforts.

Lorie Wigle, General Manager, Eco-Technology, Intel

Lorie Wigle is the General Manager of Intel’s Eco-Technology organization, which encompasses the sustainable design, manufacturing and use of Intel products. Wigle leads the Intel Open Energy Initiative, which is aligning Intel and industry efforts to drive standards-based, open implementation of smart grid and smart building technologies globally. Ms. Wigle has been with Intel for 25 years and is a frequent speaker on topics related to smart grid.

Robert Wilhite, Leader of Management and Operations Consulting, KEMA

Mr. Wilhite, a longtime veteran of the utility industry with strategic, operational, and consulting experience, leads DNV KEMA’s worldwide management and operations practice. In his prior industry roles, Mr. Wilhite developed expertise in utility operations, including distribution engineering, metering, energy efficiency, marketing, and customer services. He serves on the Board of Directors of the GridWise Alliance, as well as on the Board of Directors of Utilimetrics. Recently, Mr. Wilhite was invited to participate in a private listening and action session on the smart grid, as part of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Tom Willie, CEO and President, Current

Tom Willie leads Current, the former broadband-over-powerline company that has recast itself as a broad-based smart grid technology provider. Its biggest markets are in Europe, where it is supplying smart metering, communications and sensor technology taken up by Spanish mega-utility Iberdrola for a multi-million smart meter deployment, with smaller projects underway in Portugal and Poland. In the United States, it developed voltage and reactive power management software working for Xcel Energy’s SmartGridCity project in Boulder, Colo., but sold that business to S&C Electric Co. last year. It’s still supplying underground fault detection and grid monitoring equipment to the U.S. market, starting with a deployment with Pepco in Washington, D.C..

Dan Yates, Opower

Daniel Yates, CEO and Founder, is responsible for the vision, strategy, and leadership of Opower. Prior to founding Opower, Daniel Yates was founder and CEO of Edusoft, the leading educational software company providing assessment platforms to U.S. public school districts, which was sold to publishing company Houghton Mifflin in 2004. In 2009, Daniel Yates was named a "Tech Titan" by Washingtonian magazine and he has helped grow Opower into one of the most well-known companies working on the challenge of consumer energy management.

Audrey A. Zibelman, Chief Executive Officer, Viridity

Ms. Zibelman has more than 25 years of utility experience in both the public and private sectors. Prior to joining Viridity, Ms. Zibelman was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of PJM Interconnection. While at PJM, Ms. Zibelman oversaw the successful expansion of the PJM system to become the world’s largest single control area and wholesale market. During this time, PJM successfully reduced its costs to provide RTO services by more than 40 percent. Ms. Zibelman also successfully oversaw the expansion of PJM’s demand response programs. She was an original member of the board of directors of Reliability First Corporation, a not-for-profit company whose goal is to preserve and enhance electric service reliability and security within its territory, and she has also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the GridWise Alliance, serving as membership chair.