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“You Will” 1993 AT&T Commercial of Promises and the Reality
I was having a conversation with Len Hause recently about the developments in the electric utility industry and all the talk about “Smart Grid”. He made an interesting conceptual leap based on his experience in working with electric utilities, which can be painfully slow at changing, despite their grand promises. Smart Grid technology is the next grand promise coming from the electric utility industry, so I did a look back on history and wondered: Will electric utility companies actually be capable of evolving and changing to meet consumer needs, or will it be the consumers who implement new ideas, which in turn force the electric utility to leverage their promises of smart grid technology?
As background: A smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital technology to control appliances at consumers’ homes to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability and transparency. It overlays the electricity distribution grid with an information and net metering system. See this link in Wikipedia for more info on smart grid technology explanations and promises.
All very cool stuff but will it really be the electric utilities which usher in this new era of consumer-oriented, two-way, digital technology to save energy with our appliances at home, for example? To share stored energy in our electric or hybrid cars for others who need it when we don’t?
Answer – naw, not likely. For the last 60+ years electric utility companies have been about delivering and maintaining an electric network that only they control. It’s worked well, but ….
Take, for example, the 1993 AT&T commercial that I bet you’ll remember well if you’re over 35.
We all had the impression that AT&T, this huge legacy infrasructure-type communications company, would be the one creating and bringing all these new amazing technology innovations directly to consumers, even some that would help them control their electricity use.
Watch the commerical. Did AT&T do these things … or was it other, smaller companies which actually created the technologies, some that did not even exist back then? Should we wait for the electric utility companies, whose goal in life is to generate stable electricity without fail (as opposed to being innovative), to create the technologies? My guess (and Len’s) is that smart-grid technology for consumers is going to come about with a great deal of innovation and entrepreneurism, and it will come from totally outside the electric utility companies in the USA.
And that’s fine, really, as long as it happens. I believe we’re way behind the curve on what can be done to use energy more efficiently, and it’s the consumers who can interrupt the legacy control of the utility companies. I’m curious what you think.
Tom
Tom, what a provocative and well-thought out post!
Great research also!
So…now I’m wondering if our own Perdenales utility fiasco — were it simply leveled and reinvented completely, could not become the first USA such complete redesign experience.
It serves a huge, outlying and partly-rural population and they are all people who would welcome almost anything, I’m betting, beyond what they’ve had in the expensive (!!) Texas brand of “business as usual.”
If LBJ could get electricity to them in the first place, wouldn’t it be something if they could be first on the block to get the benefits technology can now deliver early-adopters.
That’s a coolidea Sherry and it’s THAT kind of think that is necessary to move forward. The legacy of the electric industry is to provide solid consistent power and plan ahead for growth. Well sorta like the old ATT business model. Just keep promising what will happen but for now let’s focus on what’s important – generate reliable power. Makes sense but it just doesn’t set the stage for real innovation. I think Len Hause is ‘spot on’ in his observations in working with utilities the last couple of years. They just don’t really get it and have other priorities. The innovation around smart grid technology will come from outside of their industry and likely the consumers themselves. If a utility would send out a steady Internet signal letting people and machines know during every minute of the day when the best time is to run heavy electrical loads at home (say AC, dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer …) then the consumer can set up strategies for running those devices at low demand times reducing their bill AND reducing the peak load problems. Everyone wins. We just need need some entity to make that kind of information available on the Internet via web browser and or API calls. You get the idea. It ain’t that complicated. Folks would do it manually until they had cheap devices at home that could receive the digital info and automatically adjust when loads are run.