Smart grids need even smarter governance.

• Author: Gogel, Filomena
• Position: Reprint

"Smart Grid." What do these words conjure up for you? For the typical individual working in our industry, these words might conjure up images of the various technologies associated with making the grid more intelligent: two-way communication meters, sensors and controls to improve reliability and reduce system stress, in-home control portals, meter data management systems, and the list goes on. Along with these systems comes a multitude of technology firms, service providers and consultants helping to implement the components of the Smart Grid technology spectrum.

The task of building the new Smart Grid is daunting on many fronts. While a utility may have made all the appropriate decisions on which technologies to use to implement its Smart Grid strategy, technology decisions, while a critical component of the Smart Grid, are only part of the success. This article concentrates not on the technology behind the Smart Grid, but rather on the management needed to ensure that all of the moving parts of such an enormous undertaking are orchestrated successfully, namely, governance.

Picture This ...

Your company has made the decision to implement a Smart Grid strategy. Your CEO informs you that, in your role as CIO, he expects you to design a strategy, get some of the stimulus money and build the Smart Grid for your company. You've implemented a GIS, OMS and even a CIS system successfully. Can building a Smart Grid be much different?

Well, remember that CIS implementation you barely survived? A Smart Grid implementation is a lot like that ... just on steroids. It also has some of the same challenges. For instance, vendor management, stakeholder management, change management, expectation management ... well, just plain management. For a Smart Grid implementation to be successful requires clear strategy, clear requirements and definitions to support that strategy, clear lines of demarcation concerning roles and responsibilities, and, most of all, well-defined ownership. Without these cornerstones of good management, deployment and ongoing success will be at risk, no matter how good your technology decisions are.

Why? Well, Smart Grid means different things to different stakeholders, and the very ambiguity of the concept lends itself to shifting interpretations and misaligned expectations. To your counterpart who runs T&D, Smart Grid probably means a wealth of things: it's about reliability, asset management; O&M cost reductions and improvements in SAIDI. To the head of customer Technology decisions, while a care...