Ed Lu Testifies Before Senate Energy Committee

[Energy Information]

The success of the internet is largely driven by open protocols and standards that enable all sorts of applications and hardware to interact.  We think the same principles of openness that have made the internet a thriving ecosystem can be applied to make the electric grid a smarter platform for products and services that will help consumers save energy and money. 

That's one of the reasons Edward Lu, Google's Program Manager for Advanced Projects and former astronaut, was pleased to testify at a hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to discuss Smart Grid.  Ed stressed that energy information should be provided to consumers in as close to real time as practical. And that information should be provided using open, non-proprietary standards that drive innovation and competition, and that will guard against technology obsolescence as the smart grid evolves.

If you want to check out Ed's testimony, see the link below.  Ed comes on 102:40 into the hearing (that's 102 minutes not an hour and 2 minutes) and the question and answer period starts at 113:30.

Video of the testimony:  http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.LiveStream&Hearing_id=aa1ce631-aae4-f0e3-0756-d667268c8551 
Google's written comments:  http://www.google.org/powermeter/sgtestimony.html 
Hearing Information:  http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=aa1ce631-aae4-f0e3-0756-d667268c8551 

Public Policy Blog Post: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/open-standards-for-smart-electric-grid.html