A Modest Proposal for Kickstarting Smartgrid with Smarter Devices: Lessons From Wireless Spectrum Regulatory and Policy Models for Procotols and Devices Necessary for Realizing the Smarter Grid

More than a hundred years ago, fundamental scientific discoveries in the nature of electromagnetic fields unleashed a flurry of innovations. Within decades electricity supplied lighting in homes around the world, and electromagnetic energy was being harnessed to carry information wirelessly. Over the intervening years, the technology of wireless communications progressed making it a pervasive element of nearly all human interaction. The advance of wireless technology set an aggressive pace for the development of diverse and highly sophisticated regulatory treatment, legal structures, and business models for the use of spectrum as well. Today a licensee or other lawful spectrum user can utilize spectrum in seemingly limitless ways to accommodate rapidly changing consumers demands, diverse uses and behaviors, and technical and business restrictions and requirements. Economic driven allocation models for exclusive use, such as spectrum auctions, work together with license exempt models to ensure the the highest value and use of spectrum can be identified and matched to potential users' evolving needs and demands. The evolution of business and regulatory models for spectrum have achieved great success in ensuring that spectrum use is economic, predictable, efficient, and innovative. Electric power creation, distribution, and consumption, have in similar ways experienced technology, regulatory, and business evolutions. However, while Thomas Edison would easily recognize the components of the “modern” electric power infrastructure and its device components, Alexander Graham Bell would be baffled by the components of modern wireless communications. The paper explores current smartgrid policy work and identifies the intelligence within the home and wireless device's connectivity as a key element of realizing a “smarter grid.” As policy makers, industry and consumers explore ways to ensure that electric power consumption achieves the economic, predictable, efficient, and innovative benefits today realized with spectrum, the paper identifies two core features of the spectrum regulatory model that hold value for ongoing smartgrid debates. On the cusp of decisions by Starbucks and other retailers to discontinue providing electricity via publicly accessible power outlets, the paper argues that a new model is necessary to ensure that providing power to the exploding demand of mobile devices keeps up with the ability to supple wireless connectivity. The paper argues that new technical standards covering the physical connectivity and protocol communications of devices capable of taking advantage of a smartgrid capabilities are a crucial step. Unlike a lawful spectrum user that can contract individually to provide service to a users, provide it on a free basis, or manage use in a plethora of ways leveraging diverse communication tools, no current infrastructure exists to manage the delivery of electricity in a home or business in an intelligent protocol driven manner. The paper will explore the important regulatory, industry standards, and technical barriers to achieving a protocol driven approach for intelligent power on the “inside” of the grid. The paper will review existing work in the area by the Federal Smartgrid Taskforce, IEEE Power Matters Alliance and others, and argue that focus on the "smart device" can bring facilitate important "grid-side" synergies in native DC technology and the value of locally generated power from solar or other sources. The paper concludes with a modest proposal for a protocol model and areas of research necessary to achieve the policy goals of smarter devices for a smarter grid. Bio: James Miller is a Senior Attorney Advisor in the Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission, Adjunct Professor of Law at the American University, Washington College of Law, an Affiliated Research Fellow of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at the Columbia Business School and a 2004-2006 Mansfield Fellow. At the FCC, Mr. Miller focuses on regulatory and policy matters related to spectrum and Internet technology. As Adjunct Professor of Law at the American University, Washington College of Law, he teaches U.S.-Japan Comparative Law and develops programs focused on East-Asia and technology. As a Mansfield Fellow, Mr. Miller explored Japanese regulatory policies for broadband technology and the information society, particularly focusing on legal and regulatory reforms and spectrum policy, in the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Radio Policy Bureau (MIC), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Office of Senior-Vice Minister Yoshitaka SAKURADA, and the Tokyo District and High Court’s Administrative Litigation and Intellectual Property Sections. He serves on the board of the IEEE Power Matters Alliance. He is a cum laude graduate of the Washington College of Law, American University, and holds a bachelors degree in Economics and East-Asian studies (honors) from the University of Kansas. He is bilingual in English and Japanese and frequently speaks and publishes in Japanese for business, legal, and technical audiences in Japan.