Smart Grid Standards Must Come First

Technology adoption is all about standards. To succeed with consumers, one firm's gadget often has to work with other gadgets from other firms.

Technology moves so quickly that standards set by committees usually come too late. Instead, the industry organizes itself around de-facto standards championed by single firms with the clout to make them stick. For example, as Intel has done with microprocessors.

Early adopters who are using Smart Grid Investment Grants (SGIG) are currently choosing hardware, software and communications technology well before most of the relevant standards have been settled. This creates enormous *risk* in the minds of the public.  The possibility of selecting the wrong vendors or technologies is keeping a lot of people from participating, thereby delaying mainstream adoption of smart grid products and applications.

Smart grid standards would help remove this barrier to adoption and open the door to mainstream markets.  The only question is, who has the clout to establish a de-facto standard that the rest of the industry can follow and benefit from?

I was disappointed to read a recent article written by General Electric -- clearly one of the candidates capable of establishing a smart grid standard -- that said the key to smart grid adoption is education and awareness.  This claim was based on a report commissioned by GE Energy that surveyed consumers in the U.S. and Australia.  It found that 10% of the people surveyed know "something" about smart grid technology, and those people are overwhelmingly in favor of pursuing and adopting it as soon as possible.

GE's logic goes like this: we found that people who know about the smart grid concept support it…so if everyone knew about it, everyone would support it.

Innovators and early adopters (who make up about 16% of the smart grid market) are willing to accept high risk.  And the GE survey did a nice job of confirming the fact that innovators and early adopters are technology advocates and enthusiasts.  But the bulk of the smart grid market (known as the early and late majority) is risk averse and not willing to participate until standards and other risk-lowering factors have emerged.

I wouldn't recommend spending a lot of money promoting the smart grid concept until a minimal amount of standardization is in place.  You can't advertise or "educate" your way into a mainstream market.  Without the right mix of vendors, channels, products, services and standards, pragmatic and conservative customers simply won't buy in.

With emerging technologies and markets, sometimes raising awareness is the last thing you want to do.


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In Pursuit of Solar's Tipping Point

A recent call to action in the solar industry reveals a common misunderstanding of the term "tipping point."

An initiative, called National Solar Quote Month, is an effort to encourage lots of people to request quotes from solar suppliers in order to bring solar power to a tipping point in 2010.  Unfortunately, the presence of a large number of people does not translate into a tipping point.

A "Tipping Point," as described by Malcom Gladwell in his book by the same name, is when an idea, product, message or behavior spreads like a virus.  It is the name given to a dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything changes all at once.

On page 33 of the book, Gladwell describes the need for more than just large numbers of people to create a Tipping Point.  It requires the participation of so-called connectors -- people with unique social gifts who have an uncanny genius for being at the center of events.  In other words, connectors are "influencers."

To illustrate the need for connectors, Gladwell tells the story of how Paul Revere's midnight ride started a word-of-mouth epidemic, while a virtually identical ride by fellow revolutionary William Dawes did not.  Paul Revere was a connector and William Dawes wasn't.

So fundamentally it doesn't matter HOW MANY people are spreading the message…it matters WHO is spreading the message.

Parts of the tipping point concept have been used successfully in the electric power industry in the past.  Thomas Edison used the power of influencers to accelerate adoption of electric light when he selected financial institutions in lower Manhattan as his first customers.  Seeing the windows of the financial district aglow by night demonstrated electric lighting technology to the metro population living across the Hudson River in New Jersey.  And because the financial community was considered to be an influential source of new techniques and ideas, Edison jumpstarted a word-of-mouth epidemic that had a tremendous impact on the rest of the country.

Interestingly, a group of researchers just reconfirmed the tipping point concept by studying the social networking site, Twitter.  They found that "follower count" is a meaningless metric when it comes to determining influence.  It doesn't matter how many followers you have.  It only matters who is following you.

Concepts like the Tipping Point, the Principle of Disruptive Innovation, and the Technology Adoption Lifecycle are extremely valuable in our efforts to expand the use of renewable energy around the world.  But it's important to first understand what these concepts really entail, and how they can be applied correctly.

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