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Futurists and the electric power grid
March 10, 2008

This morning I was reading the paper and happened  upon a 3/4 page ad with the headline, "Meet Sad Socket," with a depiction of a 110 V grounded receptacle that looks like it's crying. The subhead said, "You'd be sad, too, if you had to power digital-age businesses on 1950s technology."

The ad identifies itself as being from an organization called the Galvin Project, Inc., which is promoting the Galvin Electricity Initiative, which is directing us to build a "perfect power system." The Galvin in question is "former Motorola chief Robert W. Galvin [who] is leading and funding the Galvin Electricity Initiative to transform the nation's electric power system using a new business model and modern technical design. Once installed it will not fail the end-user. All of the Initiative's ideas are available to private entrepreneurs."

I could have used a perfect power system that would not have failed me last August when a violent storm broke off a tree up the street, and my house was dark for about 68 hours from Thursday afternoon until Sunday morning. At the time I thought it was related pretty much to the tree and not failed infrastructure. Maybe I missed a larger issue somehow. But I digress.

Anyway, the ad prompted me to go to the website and try to figure out who these people are. I found an interesting paper the group has written (55 pages!) with a look toward the future. Here's a tidbit:

"The intersection of these two axes creates the framework for four basic scenarios of U.S. society in 2025:

Wal-Mart World – a scenario characterized by social fragmentation and mass-market solutions – is a world where consumers are focused on sub-cultural identities but bound together by a common striving for – and definition of – economic prosperity.

The Wild Party – characterized by social fragmentation and customized solutions – presents an individualistic and somewhat chaotic America where social and technological changes, along with growing income disparity, leading to tremendous diversity in how people live.

Unity in Diversity – characterized by social unity and customized solutions – describes an America that combines agreement on basic values with tremendous creativity in the way people live out those values. Individualized solutions to common problems emerge through collaborative, peer-to-peer innovation.

Pleasantville – characterized by social unity and mass-market solutions – is an America in which renewed commitment to traditional middle-class values sets the stage for more centralized planning and communal solutions to problems.

After developing and elaborating on these scenarios, we turned our attention to the implications of the scenarios for the future of electric energy services. We concluded that three very robust drivers for the evolution of electric energy services cross-cut all of these scenarios."

Intriguing thoughts from a company interested in electric distribution. I think I'll do a bit more research.

Posted by Peter Welander on March 10, 2008 | Comments (0)