Andres Carvallo Named Chairman of the LPPC CIO Task Force

The 3rd Annual LPPC CIO Roundtable will be hosted by Austin Energy from May 14 - 16, 2008, and its CIO, Andres Carvallo, has been named chairman for the next 12 months. Of the 24 member CIOs, 16 will be in attendance at the historic event to review the work of several sub-team groups advancing the planning and execution of key activities: strategic planning, performance metrics, security, disaster recovery, project management, quality programs (like ITIL), and enterprise architecture. The LPPC members will discuss at length their progress toward building the utility of the future.

The Large Public Power Council (LPPC) is an organization comprised of 24 of the nation's largest public owned and controlled power systems. The LPPC represents the public interest on national energy issues. From Sacramento to Seattle, from New York to Texas, LPPC members directly and indirectly provide reliable, high quality, low-cost electricity to most of the more than 40 million people served by publicly owned utilities. This includes serving tens of thousands of large and small businesses located in some of the fastest growing urban and rural residential and commercial markets in America.

The LPPC CIO Task Force was created in 2005 to help accelerate the sharing of IT best practices and knowledge transfer among its members as the industry evolves very quickly to adopt new business models, new clean energy sources, new levels of reliability, and new services to customers.

http://www.lppc.org/members.htm

http://www.lppc.org/whois.htm

Is There a Plug-In Hybrid in Your Future?

Friends and colleagues across the nation stop me from time to time and ask, "my wife's car has run its course and it is time to replace it. What car should I buy? Should I wait until the Plug-In Hybrids come out? How long would that be?"

How times have changed. When Roger Duncan, General Manager at Austin Energy (my boss), decided to push for the Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle to emerge victorious and save America from oil dependency several years back, it was not clear that the world would turn so quickly to embrace the long-time green ways that many rejected for so long.

Read all about it at
http://www.pluginpartners.org/

And now, everybody loves green and everyone is rushing to it. Finally! Green makes sense. Especially for America. Here are 10 reasons as to why America needs Plug-In Hybrids:

1 - The U.S. is facing a perfect storm of rising fuel costs, escalating dependence on foreign oil, and increasing greenhouse gases and other air pollution.
2 - Oil is a finite resource.
3 - The U.S. holds only about 2% of the world’s oil reserves, yet accounts for 25% of world consumption.
4 - The U.S. must import more than 60% of our oil.
5 - Dependence on foreign oil is a national security issue because we are dependent for oil on unstable countries and/or countries hostile to the United States.
6 - Two-thirds of all U.S. oil use is consumed by cars, trucks and buses; meaning reduction in oil must concentrate on the transportation sector.
7 - There is a growing consensus that climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gases demand dramatic action.
8 - Oil use is a major contributor to greenhouse gases; for example, it accounts for about 40% of all U.S. CO2 emissions.
9 - The cost of oil, and thus gasoline, has risen dramatically in recent years, directly affecting the price of gasoline for motorists and businesses.
10 - Increasing global demand for oil— especially by China and India— means long term rising costs are likely.

So Detroit and Japan have committed to building some by 2010. But there are several new green auto start-up companies making plug-in hybrids as early as now and into the future:

2008
Tesla Motors
Think Global

2009
Fisker Automotive
Mindset

2010
Loremo
Gordon Murray Design

And I hear that there are more coming. A true renaissance for the auto industry. Personally, I dream of a Plug-In Hybrid Hummer. See, the bigger the car, the bigger the battery. Hence, the longer the ride and fun. So hurry up GM and build me one.

So why am I so interested in Plug-In Hybrids being an energy guy, because you should imagine an America with all cars Plugging-In at night recharging and leveraging the most sophisticated distribution network in the country. The electric grid. It is the most efficient, most reliable, and most effective distribution network ever built.

Now imagine an economy booming with new innovation, new business models, new companies, and renewed traditional companies riding on top of the electric grid renaissance. Imagine portable power (mobile + storage) and transactions redefining services and companies across the nation.

In the meantime, we continue to test with new tools and push the envelope to be ready for the future, now. We are building an electric grid that is intelligent and that will manage portable generation and its transactions.