105 A SPIRIT OF INNOVATION CHAPTER FIVE At the time, NISC Members served about 5 million customers with smart meters. Even that small amount of energy conser- vation could reduce carbon emissions in roughly the same magnitude as all hybrid vehicles, about 3 million, then on the nation’s roadways. “The end consumer has more power than anything we can construct [in renewable energy] to make a difference,” says Doug Remboldt, Vice President of Member Support. The NISC Meter Data Management System™ already had a “usage and bill analysis” tool as part of its e-billing feature, but NISC Members were excited about the Google app’s functionality. In keeping with the mission to fulfill the needs and desires of Members, NISC collaborated with a competitor. A former astronaut and Google exec even attended the 2009 Member Information Conference to show off a prototype, and Google began to sign up NISC Members. Eighteen months later, executives from Google sat down with NISC CEO Vern Dosch and confessed that they hadn’t understood the complexities of the utility industry. They were pulling the plug on Google PowerMeter. “All of our Members who had signed up for this Google relationship were left stranded,” Dosch says. Or, they would have been stranded, except NISC had continued to develop its own product, SmartHub, as NISC’s Research and Development staff detected early signs that Google might not be able to deliver a solution. “Our big concern was they didn’t seem to understand the market. We talked with them about how they were handling specific use cases, such as meter exchanges and locations with multiple meters. They seemed surprised by the compli- cations,” recalls Brent Roberts, a Sr. Manager of Research and Development. Doschadds,“OurMembersdroppedoffGooglePowerMeter and migrated over to SmartHub, and today, SmartHub is in over 400 of our Member sites serving nearly 4 million consumers aroundthecountry.GooglePowerMeterfromthegreat,powerful Google — they just were never able to be successful.” Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative in Jordan, Minnesota, was one of the first utilities in the world to receive the Google continued from page 101 “Our big concern was they didn’t seem to understand the market. We talked with them about how they were handling specific use cases, such as meter exchanges and locations with multiple meters. They seemed surprised by the complications.” — BRENT ROBERTS NATIONAL INFORMATION SOLUTIONS COOPERATIVE