The world’s largest chipmaker has been looking at the smart grid for about a year. But the slow speed of the market and hesitancy utilities have to swap out older equipment for new is giving it pause.
The smart grid offers a gargantuan opportunity for a company interested in finding new uses for its computer and consumer-electronics chips. Buildings consume about 40 percent of the nation’s power and are responsible for more than 40 percent of its CO2 emissions.
Clearly new ways of doing things need to be found. At the heart of this change is the need for grid devices to have more intelligence and therefore the ability to channel information and control to utility administrators and consumers. It is the ideal job for today’s powerful semiconductors.
But equipment in the grid is typically designed for a 10 to 20 years lifespan. That makes it difficult to quickly incorporate new generations of chips that come out every year or two.
