Paul Heitmann, business development director, Comverge Inc.

The development and implementation of smart grid-smart car system will take more than just technology, it will require real behavior changes, said Paul Heitmann, director business development for Comverge Inc.

“This stuff has to be transparent and intuitive,” Heitmann said. The younger generation may provide a boost, he said.

Behavior must also link with other important elements, including the supply and management of power and how it is consumed.

There’s a Holy Grail for a smart grid -- renewable energy, distribution, transformer monitoring, control of distribution, intelligent appliances and a transactive demand response.

For the most part, common platforms must be developed for success, he said.

Extremely important is the “timely decision of data between the utility and customer.”

“They’ll need 24 hour price profile for residential real-time pricing,” Heitmann said. “The role of market will be big here, too.”

Aggregation should be considered for its important role.

“We don’t want 25 million customers sending signals, we want it to flow through one company with a coordinated signal,” said Heitmann, who calls electric vehicles “transportation appliances.”

Comverge has submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy to manage, in an aggregated fashion, 100 electric and hybrid vehicles for a storage capacity of 1.2 million megawatts.

“It will show the ability to have them plugged in to get that storage capacity,” he said.