The information technology (IT) role in future energy generation, distribution and consumption

IT should play critical role as a catalyst toward the effective generation, delivery and consumption of the evolving energy businesses. One must ask the question of not how is it done today (NERC) but how it could be. The benefits of competition cannot be achieved without extensive use of high technologies (IT, systems approach to the problem). Furthermore, the incentives for using these technologies are hard to develop using a strictly engineering approach to the problem, or strictly regulatory, or economic. Their interdependence is critical to move forward. The IT tools are likely to be used first at the supply side (regulatory setup furthest along), the users needs a lot of help. The wire business is most complicated and it will require team work (engineers, regulators, economists) to move forward. Nonnegligible are the financial/political aspects of the industry transition. Long-term performance of the industry remains a real unknown.