The promise of the smart grid has been hyped to the moon and back. Millions of venture capital dollars have poured into companies and the first IPO – Silver Springs – may launch next year.
"There will be surprising things we haven't thought of today," says investor Vinod Khosla
But it is important not to get caught up in unfounded enthusiasm, says legendary investor Vinod Khosla. Smart grid companies need to ground their business plans in hard and fast calculations: do they save consumers money, do they bring better stability to the energy grid.
“They have to be based in reality,” Khosla said at the GreenBeat 2009 conference. He quarreled with the notion that he is a skeptic of the space.
But he said that smart meter provider Silver Springs’ success won’t necessarily be contagious.
“There will be surprising things we haven’t thought of today,” products brought about by the networking on the utility grid, he said. But for every 100 start-ups, five will be successful. The key is finding which they are.
Jean-Baptiste Su
Mark Boslet
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