Integrated technology roadmap development process: Creating smart grid roadmaps to meet regional technology planning needs in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest

Smart grid has been described as the Energy Internet: Where Energy Technology meets Information Technology. The incorporation of such technology into vast existing utility infrastructures offers many advantages, including possibilities for new smart appliances, energy management systems, better integration of renewable energy, value added services, and new business models, both for supply-and demand-side management. Smart grid also replaces aging utility technologies that are becoming increasingly unreliable, as the average ages for many critical components in utility systems now exceed their original design lives. However, while smart grid offers the promise of revolutionizing utility delivery systems, many questions remain about how such systems can be rolled out at the state, regional, and national levels. Many unique regulatory and market structure challenges exist, which makes it critical to pick the right technology for the right situation and to employ it in the right manner. Technology Roadmapping may be a valuable approach for helping to understand factors that could affect smart grid technology and product development, as well as key business, policy, and market drivers. As emerging smart grid technologies are developed and the fledgling industry matures, a critical issue will be understanding how the combination of industry drivers impact one another, with technology development informing the development of business or service models, which in turn can lead to rethinking of policy and market structures. This will be a co-evolutionary process. To better understand how this could affect future smart grid roadmaps in both Oregon and the Pacific Northwest region, this research proposes to build upon existing roadmapping processes by adding decision modeling tools which incorporate key metrics defined by experts. This will create a more robust roadmap that will allow key variables to be tested and different pathways to be explored.