Chicago ComEd electric power customers may end up paying an extra $3 per month to help fund a Smart Grid data network that will allow ComEd to better control power use and to speed diagnosis and identification of power outages.
That's a lot of money when you think about extending across millions of customers for many years. A better approach would be for the community to build a high performance, service-oriented broadband network and sign up the electric company to use that network to do its power management. Instead of building two networks, build just one and use it for many different kinds of services and applications, instead of just Internet access.
Spend less and get more--not a difficult concept, but few places are thinking about converging networks and electric service needs. Once stand out exception is Danville, Virginia, where the city electric utility has already started doing that with its nDanville network. Joe King, the Assistant City Manager for Utilities, recognized this was a better way to do things years ago (Design Nine provides services to the nDanville project).