Roadmaps into the gridjungle

It is a fashion when investigating future technologies to develop “roadmaps”, but there also seem to be an inflation in such. If it should be a real roadmap it needs to guide the steps of the user and enable him/her to recognise the features of the landscape when it changes. It needs to give information about not only the technologies and products, but also about the conditions for their use and development, such as markets, alternative solutions and customer perspectives. The roadmap should then, above all, give guidance on what there is to do to make things happen. The future of electricity systems is a modelcase for roadmapping and there has been a few made. In Europe, for the Netherlands, and in the U.S. for example. The studies are already a bit dated but contain a wealth of information on different technology options. Both these studies gives the reader a very good overview and guidance whereas many others that are called roadmaps in reality is wishful thinking from the authors. And we need a lot more of the considerate sort of roadmaps to understand and handle the complexity of technology change. A thriling thought is the change of todays "Passive networks" for distribution and transmission into "Active networks" that provides higher customer value. The Dutch study covers several issues related to electricity use and configuration of systems, see figure below.

The US study maps very consciously the critical elements, see figure below, of which the technology development is much concentrated on lowering of losses.