Smart Grid Educational Series Inaugural Seminar

Foothill College will host the Smart Grid Educational Series Inaugural Seminar Tuesday, March 20, from 4 to 7 p.m. in the Foothill College Campus Center in Los Altos Hills. Seating is limited. Admission is free to students who present valid student identification from any school, college or university. General admission is $20. Parking is $3.
The seminar will focus on the role of the customer in making the smart grid a reality. In addition to remarks from Foothill College President Judy C. Miner, Ed.D., and networking opportunities, the seminar will feature a keynote address by Ed Cazalet, as well as a panel discussion by leading energy experts. The panel discussion will be moderated by Erfan Ibrahim, founder and CEO of The Bit Bazaar LLC, A Marketplace for Digital Ideas.
A former technical executive at Electric Power Research Institute, Ibrahim is offering these monthly seminars in collaboration with Foothill College as a public service to bridge the knowledge gap in the industry and inspire a new generation of students, researchers, engineers, and policy experts to understand the technical, policy and business requirements to enable Smart Grids and develop the skill set to design, build and manage the infrastructure in a commercially viable way.
In addition to answering audience members' questions, Cazalet will present Transactive Energy: When It Comes to Electricity, The Customer Needs to Take Charge. According to Cazalet, transactive energy allows each customer-residential, commercial, industrial, and public sector-to choose how much electricity to buy at a fixed price and how much at a variable price. This allows the customer to take charge. Transactive energy also can support low-income customers with low-fixed prices for fixed amounts while enlisting them to follow the sun and the wind with variable prices. The combination of fixed amounts of electricity at fixed prices and variable amounts at variable prices is the core idea of transactive energy. Transactive energy supports customer choice among multiple regulated and competitive suppliers. Suppliers can be neighbors with excess solar electricity, community-owned electricity sources or main grid sources. Electricity transactions can be in local micro-markets with grid connections to regional suppliers. The idea is that any party can automatically buy or sell electricity with any other party at the best fixed or variable price. Customers need to take charge and support policy changes by the California Public Utilities Commission to implement transactive energy.
Cazalet is chief executive officer of TeMIX, Inc., [www.temix.net], a transactive energy services company; vice president of MegaWatt Storage Farms, Inc., [www.megawattsf.com], a renewable energy storage developer; and CEO of The Cazalet Group [www.cazalet.com].  He is also co-chairman of the federal committee that developed standards for transactive energy. Appointed by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, he previously served as a governor of the California Independent System Operators. He was a founder and CEO of Automated Power Exchange, Inc., [www.apx.com], and has 40 years of electricity experience. He is an engineer and holds a doctorate specializing in electricity pricing from Stanford University.
Joining Cazalet for the panel discussion will be Anne Smart, Silicon Valley Leadership Group; Chris Villarreal, California Public Utilities Commission; and Mark Toney, The Utility Reform Network (TURN).
The Smart Grid Educational Series seminars will bring world-class experts in the field to educate the industry on critical issues and create a forum for interaction to solve complex problems in this field. This in-person forum will also allow national labs and academia to showcase their research work to the nation and internationally to attract new funding, new faculty, new students and new ideas for curriculum development. It will also promote leading-edge technologies from vendors, experts, and sound engineering, business process and policy principles leading to economic growth, job creation and social benefit.
Parking lots 1, 3, 5 and 7 provide best access to the Campus Center. Purchase required parking permit for $3 from dispensers in any student lot. For more information or to reserve seating in advance, e-mail Erfan Ibrahim at erfan97150@gmail.com.