Here in the US, the NIST SGIP has been coordinating the various Smart Grid stakeholders to help develop standards for an interoperable Smart Grid. Similar efforts have started in other countries. Last month, the Korean Smart Grid Task Force officially signed up to partner with the SGIP on this issue.Looking at all these collaboration efforts, one could conclude that all the countries have the same vision for the Grid.

In a recent IEEE newsletter, Rahul Tongia wrote about the challenges in modernizing the grid in India. The main difference between the problems of the Grid in countries like the USA and India is one of production capacity. In other words, it is the gap between the supply and demand of electricity. Here in the USA, when demand peaks, there is sufficient capacity to generate the additional needs but it costs too much and strains the grid. One of the goals of the Smart Grid is to reduce Peak Load and spread the load across time. Over in India, there is insufficient generating capacity and simply shifting the demand across time might not be all that useful. In such situations, what is the best way to invest your resources? Does it make sense to worry about whether your refrigerator should connect to your smart phone or to the smart meter? Rahul has a few good suggestions on what design philosophy to adopt in India: frugal innovation, modular solutions, scalable functionality and short learning curves. The suggestion that stood out for me was the ‘frugal innovation concept’. Why shouldn’t this concept be adopted here in the USA and around the world?

Every country will have its unique problems in trying to modernize their grids. Collaboration among technical agencies will help examine these problems from different aspects. The IEEE is definitely helping this cause. A quick search on IEEE’s database shows that many of the recent Smart Grid related papers have come from outside the USA. It will be interesting to see how the new Grid will evolve around the world over the next decade.