Editor in chief
TERESA HANSEN
This month Senior Editor Kathleen Davis penned the second article in her two-part series “Will Smart Grid Take Over the World?” The industry experts Kathleen interviewed didn’t say smart grid will take over the world, but they are confident that smart grid development will move forward and the grid of the future will be much smarter than it is now.
The smart grid might not take over the world, but the term could. As I read through this issue, I realized almost every story mentions the smart grid. As I read through the press releases, newsletters, event announcements, Web cast advertisements and other things in my inbox, I see that many of them also include the term. I even heard it in a television ad during one of the Sunday morning news shows. The term is everywhere.
About this time every year, the editorial team brainstorms and develops the next year’s editorial calendar. We then develop each issue’s content based on the topics listed for that month in the editorial calendar.
This issue’s editorial calendar includes stimulus funding, broadband over powerline, metering and dynamic pricing and standards development. In addition, the issue includes several topics not on the editorial calendar. I could have listed just one topic on the editorial calendar: smart grid. I might be able to cover next year’s entire editorial calendar with the topic.
Smart grid has become the term of choice in the power delivery industry, but it means different things to different people. The term is somewhat ambiguous, which explains why it’s used so often—even in a Sunday morning TV ad. In this industry it keeps showing up, not because it’s ambiguous, but because it fits and is important.
The magazine’s editorial staff will continue to select relevant industry topics for editorial calendars; we won’t simply list smart grid for each month. The term will, however, continue to be used in this magazine because smart grid makes sense for our industry. I wonder, though, if it makes sense in Sunday morning TV ads?
