Seminar: Bruce Nordman, "The Case against the Smart Grid"

[Philip Johnson]

(From Aaron Ohta)  There will be a Berkeley seminar given by Bruce Nordman of LBNL tomorrow at 9am HST.  The seminar is broadcast live on the web.  The subject is critical thinking about smart grids and their implementation.  See below for details:

Please join us for the next CITRIS I4energy lecture at the Banatao Institute at Berkeley this semester:

"The Case 'Against' the Smart Grid"
Bruce Nordman
Energy Analysis Department, LBNL

12:00 p.m., Friday, October 2
250 Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley
http://www.citris-uc.org/events/i4e-Oct02

The full seminar schedule for the fall can be found at http://www.citris-uc.org/events/i4e-fall2009. As always, these talks are free, open to the public and broadcast live online at mms://media.citris.berkeley.edu/webcast250, and questions can be sent via Yahoo IM to username: citrisevents.

Abstract: Amid all the current cheerleading around the "Smart Grid", there is a lack of critical thinking about the design choices underlying the dominant paradigms being put forward, and how current efforts do or don't relate to any long-term strategy we have.  In addition, in the past decades we have learned a great deal about how to design and architect networks, how they evolve, how they have collided with energy use, and how they work in practice.  This talk will explore some of these topics, and suggest a path forward that could result in significantly more energy savings than our present one.

Biography: Bruce has been at LBNL since 1986 studying buildings energy use, focusing on electronics most of that time, and on networks for the last 10 years.  His research on behalf of Energy Star and the California Energy Commission involves test procedure, energy efficiency requirements, technology analysis and standards development for IEEE, IEC, and other standards organizations.  He has degrees in Architecture and Energy & Resources from UC Berkeley.