Digital Common Sense

 Interesting article that caught my eye -

Could We See A Skype For The Power Industry?
from the peer-to-peer-power dept

There are many out there who see the future of the IT industry as resembling that of electrical utilities. In this vision, companies like Google and Salesforce.com build out computing power plants, and rent out software and processing power to their customers. Certainly, there are aspects of the business that are going this way, but to assume that today’s utility model is the model to strive for is to ignore some interesting things that are happening within the field of electrical power. A young company called GridPoint wants utilities to install backup power appliances in customer homes. The idea is that customers can store up power during off-peak hours, for use when demand is high. The company claims that by evening out demand this way, power companies can put off building new power plants. So while it may be that IT is looking to emulate the power industry, the power industry itself may go less decentralized, as new technologies help bring about distributed generation and storage.

I’ve talked to a lot of people in the last 6-8 months about P2P technologies. In communications, especially in enterprise networks, P2P represents a risk factor that many businesses aren’t willing to accept. Home users, however, use P2P technologies routinely.

Here’s a glimpse of an approach that could alter then landscape of the power inndustry.

Technorati Tags: Peer-to-Peer Power

Filed by Ken at 12:40 pm under Technology