News
Smart Grid Analysis sees slower market development due to government policies and regulations

GLEN ALLEN, VA — Smart Grid Analysis (SGA), NanoMarkets' group dedicated to analyzing emerging market and technology opportunities within Smart Grids, has just issued a new report that analyzes the impact that U.S. government policies and regulations are likely to have on Smart Grids in the coming years. The report notes that while government agencies are providing the funding for Smart Grids, it is also government agency involvement in standards setting and interoperability is likely to slow the markets' development leading to calls for deregulation and open competition within the next few years. Additional details about the report are available at www.smartgridanalysis.com.

SGA has issued reports on energy storage, cables and insulators and sensors and will soon have additional reports that will analyze the market for transmission and distribution equipment, microgrids, smart metering and renewable energy integration.

Key findings:
The US Government agency, NIST, has been tasked with driving the technical standards and interoperability process. SGA notes that this is a vastly different to the normal practice within the US of private industry trade or standard bodies taking that responsibility. Smart Grid business opportunities involving new technologies are most likely to emerge in areas that have been favored by regulators and legislators. These include energy storage, load control, distributed generation, enhanced power monitoring, and direct system state sensors. There are also immediate opportunities for firms active in areas — such as substation automation — where standards are mature and unlikely to change.

Regulators have yet to make time-varying rates available to smaller users in the U.S. or in Europe. Until this situation changes, customer-side business opportunities in the Smart Grid will lie primarily with fairly rudimentary customer metering systems, such as those capable of remote reading. Meanwhile, many utilities are expected to choose "Smart Grid Lite," waiting to see how the politics and economics unfold before actively promoting user-side activities.

About the report:
This report from Smart Grid Analysis provides a detailed analysis of the interplay between Smart Grid policy and Smart Grid business. Like all major infrastructure projects, the new business revenues that are likely to flow from the deployment of Smart Grids will depend heavily on government policy. And governments in the U.S., Canada, Europe, China and Australia, among other nations and regions, are now following similar visions as a way of addressing energy independence, climate change and network survivability issues.

For more information visit www.smartgridanalysis.com.

February 3, 2010  By Newswire