EPRI predicts the future of powering buildings

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), in conjunction with the Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society (CEIDS), has issued a new report that envisions daily life in the year 2020. Called "Power the Next Century: Scenarios of Change in the Way People Interact with Buildings," the report focuses potentially attractive and useful paths for investment in technology development. EPRI considered four scenarios in the future use of energy in buildings: ·Contactor Nation: This is a high-tech world characterized by flexible, pragmatic work relationships and prickly individualism, in which rapid innovation allows inhabitants to deepen their commitment to individual choice. ·Rave New World: This scenario features communal connectivity in an atmosphere of radical technological change, with an affinity for group solutions and a youthful optimism in the fertility of experimentation. ·Gridlock: Incremental technological advance, combined with a desire to "get away" from other people, and a failure to resolve common standards and solutions, makes this scenario a stressful place, characterized by both competition and frustration. ·Take Our Medicine: This world thinks of itself as mature. Its inhabitants are willing to make difficult decisions to advance the greater good, even if that requires the sacrifice of some individual rights; restraint and community-level planning characterize this scenario.