Alstoms Laurent Schmitt announces agreement between SmartGrids France and Global Smart Grid Federation

Laurent Schmitt [1], Vice-President SmartGrids France, announced yesterday that the association will become a member of the Global Smart Grid Federation, an international consortium which brings together the major actors of the Smart Grid industrial sector. 

The growth in electricity consumption, the decrease in natural resources and the environmental constraints push the consumers to change their way of consuming, apprehending and understanding the electrical grid. The SmartGrids France consortium unites 2,300 actors under a common objective: to find concrete solutions to the technological and social challenges of modern power grids. 

France is leading the way in the Smart Grid industry. The country is the site of more than 50 pilot and commercial smart grid projects^[2] on all scales, including IssyGrid, Nice Grid, Poste Intelligent and COOPERATE, in which Alstom is an active partner. With yesterdays announcement, SmartGrids France becomes the first group in Europe to join the Global Smart Grid Federation, bringing Frances vision on the future of the electricity network and experience in Smart Grid and Smart City projects, to the global stage. 

As a member of the Global Smart Grid Federation, SmartGrids France joins a consortium of worldwide actors in the Smart Grid sector. It aims to create synergies between different organisations from the public and private sectors, as well as government bodies, to create more intelligent networks. 

[1] Laurent Schmitt has been Vice President for Alstom Grids Smart Grid Solutions business since June 2010 and has been Vice-President for SmartGrids France since its launch in 2012. Laurent is also a member of several strategic industry committees working on Smart Grids such as CIGRE, IEC, EPRI, ENTSOe and the European Smart Cities Platform, and contributes to a number of expert advisory taskforces to the Commission on the topics of Generation, Grid and Storage applications. He is co-chairman of the European Smart Grid Security Working Group, led through the ETSE-CEN-CENELEC standardisation initiative.

[2] SMART GRIDS CRE, 2013, http://www.smartgrids-cre.fr/index.php?p=france