"We need to understand what the Smart Grid consumer is looking for. While right now it is cost over
carbon and ease of use, in the future it may be education and health."
~ Laura Ipsen, Cisco SVP/GM Smart Grid
"Electric utilities are the only industry in which everyone tries to be
3rd in class, rather than go 1st."
~ Robert Gee, Gee Strategies President, explaining utilities aversion to being early adopters
"There is a social justice aspect... the people who have the least to
spend have the greatest need to save. (The Smart Grid) is not about dialing in to turn on your hot tub from your BMW.
~ Katherine Hamilton, GridWise Alliance President
"Meters are the cash register of the utility, the cornerstone, the touch point between them and the consumer."
~ Philip Mezey, Itron North America SVP & COO
"We are not in stealth mode—at least not intentionally."
~ Innovation Competition Panelist
"Consumer behavior is a difficult thing to change. I'm skeptical that we will see it."
~ Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures Partner
"The direction of technology innovation is hard to predict. To see twitter or facebook or google before it happens. That is what is exciting about the smart grid. Be careful about the hype. Watch out for environmentalists. Look at the economic proposition."
~ Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures Partner
"Great opportunity is followed by hype, followed by bubble, followed by crash. But if it is fundamentally valuable, like the internet, then the crash doesn’t matter. If you look at the internet through the dot com bubble burst, there is no blip in internet traffic. There was no bubble on the use of the internet."
~ Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures Partner
"Bubbles also can be useful—like all the fire optic cables left over from the telecom bubble." ~ Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures Partner
"We have not invented a cost effective way to Tivo electricity."
~ Andrew Tang, PG&E Senior Director Smart Energy Web
"We need a new economics—a gridonomics."
~ Laura Ipsen, Cisco SVP/GM Smart Grid


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