How important is the smart grid for utilities today?
Carvallo: Extremely important. Utilities need to continue to improve on how they manage reliability (substation automation and distribution automation), more renewable energy, demand response programs and new capabilities around distributed generation and electric vehicles. Kendrick: “Important” is such a relative term. Utilities are currently focused on workforce planning, current (as well as potential future) climate change legislation and rising commodity costs, especially fuel. Therefore, anything and everything that can impact these priorities is important to utilities. In the short-term, the smart grid cannot clearly and directly impact these utility priorities. Nevertheless, with over $4 billion dollars flooding into this area through smart grid Department of Energy (DOE) grants, I would characterize the smart grid as a present utility priority driven by government funding, consumer curiosity and state (potential) mandates. In terms of importance based on purely short-term retur
