It seems smartness is in these days. Hillary is talking about “smart power” diplomacy. Obama wants to bring back the science. And just last night I picked up a witty and thoughtful copy of the New Yorker and read an entire article. With no offense to Texas or the old addage, Keep It Simple Stupidhead, I’m pretty down with this change.
One reason I’m excited about smartness is the “smart grid”.

GridWise Talks Smart Grid in the Stimulus
The “smart grid” isn’t really a thing. It’s anything that helps the power grid communicate better. It’s a slogan to talk about upgrading the electricity grid so that it can waste less and do more.
Obama tucked $11 billion for the smart grid in the $825 billion Stimulus that just passed the House. If the Senate gives the thumbs up to those $11 billion, that will mean really big things for the black wires that connect to our houses.
Right now our electricity grid is not so smart. No disrespect to the diligent engineers, operators, and regulators who put the thing together over the years, but the thing can’t communicate for shit.
I really like things that run smoothly. I have five siblings and grew up fighting over the TV remote. I know what chaos looks like. Rachael wants to watch pony cartoons. Warren and Ben want to watch Fraggle Rock. Heather and Adam want to watch Princess Bride for the third time this week and I’m fuming because we’re missing the Super Bowl and nobody else knows or cares what a football is. Because we each want different shows and are clueless about how to communicate with each other, we end up with mom stomping into the room, shutting off the TV and telling everybody to stop fighting and go outside.
I’m not an expert on this, but here’s my understanding of the current electrical grid:
The power grid isn’t exactly like my childhood experience of watching television, but it does have similarities. There are more than 1000 different utility companies spread across the country whose job it is to sell power to hundreds of millions of households and businesses. Each are connected to centralized distribution and transmission centers that channel power from large power plants far away. Decisions about how much power to transmit, when, and how are determined by operators and regulators with different rules and guidelines in different regions.
While the complex system is a mess, the real kicker is that the system doesn’t communicate very well. The people running the show don’t know how much electricity is being used until well afterward. Communication only goes one way most of the time. To find out how much electricity I’m using, the utility has to come to my house and physically check my meter. If I want to save electricity in my house, I have to look at my monthly bill, compare it to other bills, and try to figure out what I should turn off, turn down, or replace. If I have a solar panel, a turbine in my stream, or some other way of generating my own power, unless my state has a “net-metering” law, I can’t sell the extra power that I produce to the grid or to anyone else (unless they’re really gullible).
The smart grid fixes all of this business. Smart meters on your house combined with smart technology up the wire show you and the utility what appliances are using what amount of electricity at what times. If we know how much we’re using and the utility knows how much electricity we need, we can get what we need and even store or generate our own power and sell it back to earn some extra cash.
The smart grid is like we get the internet for the grid. It’s sweet. Let’s get one.