Saturday, March 6, 2010

Jon Arnold: Building Trust

I've been following this thread, and there's a fair bit of agreement on the basic issues, and my thinking is in line with what's being said here. Before continuing, I'd like to say thanks for offering this forum. It's a great initiative, and I have been encouraging people to participate.

One element this is largely missing here is discussion around how utilities will engage consumers to build trust and ensure this data will be used responsibly and in a way that respects personal privacy. Without that trust, many of the home-based aspects of Smart Grid deployments will not come to fruition - no matter how good the technology is.

I'm glad to see a colleague of mine, Christine Hertzog, in this thread, especially since she is the only one who has touched on these issues so far. I think this is an important part of the debate, and hope others weigh in at some point.

I'm not an expert in privacy issues, but would like to steer you to a great white paper that addresses this in the context of the Smart Grid. One of my hats involves driving thought leadership for our Smart Grid portal, and you can download the paper from the home page any time. I hope you do - it's a good read!

Here's the link: http://smart-grid.tmcnet.com/

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