Smart Grid, Electric Co-ops, and el Conquistador

Good news for members of rural electric cooperatives! The CEO of your co-op will not be taking that junket to a resort in Puerto Rico in a few days in order to be wined and dined by purveyors of expensive utility doo-dads that would be paid for by their co-ops’ members.

A mysterious outfit called HaneLeeWells Expos LLC has postponed its so-called “Rural Smart Grid Summit” that was supposed to happen from April 26 to 29 at the El Conquistador Resort in Puerto Rico. According to the event’s web site, the idea was to persuade at least 80 executives from electric co-ops to enjoy a free visit to the resort and participate in “private Boardroom appointments” with vendors prepared to discuss “the latest technology breakthroughs” on the Smart Grid front.

Here’s the pitch to vendors: “As a leading, smart-grid-enabling vendor, you can see how productive and potentially profitable Rural Smart Grid Summit attendance can be. This is a first-ever opportunity to connect with a top-quality, by-invitation-only audience of North America's most exclusive Rural Electric Cooperative Executives. Summit guests —carefully qualified as the opinion leaders and hosted in VIP style — will be present to listen to your approach for a smarter grid, learn about your current and emerging technologies, and explore new strategies for business success.

One might well wonder who will be conquering whom at El Conquistador! IBM has signed up as a lead vendor-sponsor of the event, as has International Broadband Electronic Communications (IBEC) and the smart-meter vendor Landis & Gyr.

Happily, this week’s announcement that the El Conquistador junket has been postponed to October is sufficiently suffused with PR blarney to give one reason to hope that Co-op VIPs, or at least most of them, are not succumbing to the moral hazard that is as ubiquitous here as the sand traps of the El Conquistador golf course. (Here’s how the resort describes its golfing facility: “Stroll the daunting hills and bunkers tamed by cleverly planned lateral movements and broad openings. View the elevation changes of more than 200 feet - rare among typically flat Caribbean golf resorts. And take in the greens, dotted with palm trees, lush island flora, and fauna.” But we digress.)

According to a news release that was circulated via PRNewswire, the Rural Smart Grid Summit has been postponed “due to unprecedented interest and scheduling needs by industry insiders.” The news release quoted event organizer William Booth as proclaiming that "many of the invited eighty plus CEOs of the top electric coops from across the United States had schedule conflicts with the original April dates, yet wanted to interact in an intimate business setting with Smart Grid technology leaders like IBM, IBEC and Balance Energy.” Notice the way they threw in the names of the event sponsors.

All kidding aside, this event, its promotion, and its postponement, raise two serious issues.

The first should be of concern to people who take seriously the notion that the nation’s electricity grid needs to be dragged out of the early 20th Century and into the 21st. It was probably inevitable that the phrase “smart grid” would no longer mean just sensible efforts to make the bulk power system, and the distribution circuits attached to it, more flexible and interactive so that we can use electricity more efficiently, sustainably and reliably. If one needed evidence that the phrase “smart grid” has been at least partially co-opted by companies that seek profit by needlessly gold-plating the electricity grid at ratepayer expense, the Rural Smart Grid Summit is it. Smart gridders of goodwill should unambiguously distance themselves from efforts of this sort.

Secondly, the very existence of such a pitch to executives of Rural Electric Co-ops ought to be profoundly unsettling to anyone who truly embraces the idea that such organizations, owned and at least theoretically controlled by their customers, should be resolutely dedicated to acting in the best interests of those customer-members and no one else. One expects executives of investor-owned utilities to succumb to junket temptations, given that shareholders are historically forgiving of (or oblivious to) such faustian bargains. But executives of rural electric co-ops are like the kosher hot dog company in the famous TV advertisement featuring Uncle Sam looking heavenwards. The gist of the ad was that, while most hot dog companies have only Uncle Sam’s USDA standards to worry about, “we,” proclaimed the kosher hot dog company, “have to answer to a higher authority.”

If you belong to a rural electric cooperative, rely on such a co-op for electricity, and assume the co-op is acting in your best interests, maybe it is worth checking out whether your friendly neighborhood co-op exec is truly answering to the higher authority. Ask her if she has any plans to visit Puerto Rico in October.