Knowledge Requirements, Gaps and Learning Responses in Smart Grid Adoption: An Exploratory Study in U.S. Electric Utility Industry

The U.S. electric utility industry is facing a number of challenges today, including aging infrastructure, growing customer demand, CO2 emissions, and increased vulnerability to overloads and outages. Utilities are under greater regulatory, societal and consumer pressure to provide a more reliable and efficient power supply and reduce its carbon footprint. In response, utilities are investing in smart grid technologies. Despite various definitions of smart grid, it is characterized by employing a set of sophisticated sensing, processing and communicating digital technologies to enable a more observable, controllable, and automated power supply. Yet, the adoption of smart grid technologies presents significant knowledge challenges to electric utilities. This study aims to advance the understanding of IT knowledge challenges in smart grid adoption by focusing on three research questions: 1) What knowledge requirements are critical for smart grid adoption? 2) What knowledge gaps are utilities facing with smart grid adoption? How do utilities vary in the level of knowledge gaps? 3) How do utilities overcome knowledge gaps through learning? How do utilities vary in the learning choices? This study adopts a qualitative approach using data from 20 utility interviews and secondary information to address the above questions. The analysis indicates four broad areas of knowledge requirements, which are smart grid technology and vendor selection, smart grid deployment and integration, big data, and customer management. The data also reveals several knowledge gaps faced by utilities in these four areas, and confirms that utilities vary in the level of knowledge gaps, which depends on a mix of factors including prior experience, IT sophistication, service territory characteristics, size, ownership form, regulatory support and support from external organizations. The data further indicates several learning practices that are commonly adopted by utilities to overcome the knowledge gaps in smart grid adoption. It is also determined that utilities vary in the configuration of these practices, and the scale and format of many practices. The variance in learning responses is jointly determined by level of knowledge gaps, knowledge relatedness, size, risk-averse culture and top management support. This study has both research and practical implications. Theoretically, it enriches IT adoption, broader IS research and organizational learning literature in several ways. From the practical perspective, it also has valuable implications for utilities, regulators and other regulated industries and economies

Initial Mission Status Analysis of 3-Axis Stable Tsinghua-1 Microsatellite

The 50kg 3-axis stable Tsinghua-1 microsatellite, the first Chinese university Microsatellite will be launched in Russia by COSMOS rocket before June of 2000. This paper is planning to report the initial mission status of Tsinghua-1 microsatellite. Tsinghua-1 Microsatellite, which is developed by Tsinghua Space Center (TSC) and Surrey Space Center (SSC), is new generational 3-axis stable Microsatellite in 50 Kg region. It is used as technical demonstration of Microsatellite constellation for globe disaster forecast net. The main Payloads include Multi-Spectral Earth Image System (MEIS) which have a 40 meters ground resolution and the cameras will be mounted 19 degrees off Z-axis of the satellite to meet the 400 kilometre ground swath requirement, Date Transmit Experiment payload which is used to survey the radio frequencies interference and GPS receiver for orbit determining . This paper will describe the Tsinghua-1’s design in detail,. Specially for the 3-axis stable controlling technology , the image payload and it’s targeting technology . After it be launched, the Initial Mission Status, such as initial attitude capture, 3-axis precision control of the satellite platform and the initial images form image payloads will be published in this paper firstly

Quantum dense coding scheme via cavity decay

We investigate a secure scheme for implementing quantum dense coding via cavity decay and liner optics devices. Our scheme combines two distinct advantages: atomic qubit sevres as stationary bit and photonic qubit as flying bit, thus it is suitable for long distant quantum communication.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure. A revised version, accept for publication in Journal of Modern Optc