Embedded systems will soon be improving everything from the automotive industry to the electric grid.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
By Erica Naone
Lisa Su, senior vice president and chief
technology officer at Freescale Semiconductor spoke in her keynote
today at EmTech's Women in Technology Workshop about
near-future uses of embedded systems. Now that we can put hundreds of millions
of transistors on a chip, she says, the question is, what do you do with all
that technology?
She sees embedded systems improving the electric grid -- with
good sensor technology and electronics, she says, it would be possible to
create many smaller local electric systems. Home appliances could have smart
power meters that adjust based on spikes in demand. Other areas where she sees
embedded systems causing big improvements are telemedicine, robotic surgery,
and the automotive industry. In all three cases, the key innovations, she says,
would come from networks, whether those networks would allow faster diagnoses,
or smart highways that take over most of the duties of driving.
"When you think of what we can do as a society, we've really only
scratched the surface when it comes to using the technology capability that we
have," Su says.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
javs on 09/24/2008 at 8:14 AM
74
Is the power industry obsolete price controls business model a great barrier to the competition among business models and thus to grid innovations using those capabilities effectively?
Please take a look at an update of an earlier post on the TR article Managing Energy
There is a need to open the demand side of the power industry to enable the development of the resourses of the demand side. The smart grid should remain a closed market that guarantees a responsibility to transport instead of a responsibility to serve. To open the demand side means obliterating the obsolete business model of winning rate cases to the regulator and enabling business model innovations under competition in the retail market.
Aug 29, 2008. A comment to update this post was deleted today. The key insight is in the link to the EWPC article Let’s Avoid Many Expensive Fiascos which shows the power utilities price control business models are in a dead end and that regulators are making excessive risks that will go into customers' pockets as soon as the new investments go into infant mortality or premature obsolescence. The articles’ summary reads:
There is no need to cite any [analytical] evidence “to enable a highly competitive, pro-consumer, complete and fully functional market architecture and design paradigm shift.” What is needed is to have “the global power industry … get out of the wrong jungle to produce a EWPC based EPAct as soon as possible.”
Three key references are Warren Causey’s article Utilities Full Speed Ahead on IUE/SG: The Question is What to do First, the EWPC article Utilities and Regulators’ Value Destruction, and the EWPC article Leadership Answers What to do First.