By Nick Heath, 29 May 2009 11:20
INTERVIEW
The government recently announced a consultation on plans to put smart meters in every home by 2020. Such meters rely on machine-to-machine comms to enable the real-time transmission of gas and electricity meter readings to the power company.
Lister said smart meters have a crucial role in helping National Grid match its power generation to future demand from its millions of customers across the UK and US.
"It's about providing customers with the ability to make informed decisions about how they use energy and also about allowing us to ensure we are making the maximum utilisation of our network.
"In future we could offer customers the opportunity to optimise their carbon footprint by more effective management of their household consumption through different types of monitoring technology, providing the ability to power devices up and down as needed.
"It will require significant investment but National Grid will be thinking very hard about how these technologies can be exploited in the years ahead."
Lister is also pushing the green agenda among the company's 27,000 employees, with the National Grid piloting client side virtualisation that will allow for wider use of thin client technologies in future.
Server virtualisation, low emissions servers and racks spaced to maximise cooling are also used in the company's eight datacentres to drive up processing efficiency and reduce power consumption and CO2 emissions.
Lister said: "It's about looking at the right balance between server rationalisation, utility computing models and also thinking about the optimal way of delivering great services to our colleagues across the business - whether they are in the field, the call centre or working from home."
National Grid has help in looking after its systems from numerous outsourcing partners including CSC, IBM, TCS and Wipro, with deals covering application and infrastructure support and maintenance.
In his day-to-day job at National Grid Lister also has to juggle managing systems that oversee transmission of electricity and gas with working to protect infrastructure against the potential threat of cyber attacks.
"There's the network control of managing the grid for gas and energy distribution. We have some very big industrial mission-critical systems capabilities that are in use every day keeping the lights on.
"The security of our organisation and facilities is also right up there as one of our highest priorities alongside safety and maintaining service," he said.
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1. mike johnson
Well if Mr Lister was serious about not being labelled just an "outsourcer and cost cutter" but about delivering capability and business growth why hasnt he styed on to do such a role at a company that clearly needs it rather than jump ship yet again after a very short tenure.