With Atlanta, Georgia hoping to become the “Silicon Valley” of the energy sector, state leaders, including Governor Sonny Perdue and Senator Saxby Chambliss converged on GE’s new Smart Grid Technology Center of Excellence to celebrate phase one of its development. The center, which will be completed this fall, will create more than 400 new jobs over three years — with more than 150 employees having been hired in the last six months. As speakers at today’s ceremony made clear, one of the biggest hurdles in building-out the smart grid in the U.S. is explaining just what those two critically important words mean.

As speakers at today’s ceremony made clear, one of the biggest hurdles in building-out the smart grid in the U.S. is explaining just what those two critically important words mean. While the video below does run for a lengthy eight minutes, it nevertheless provides a crystal clear explanation of just why the smart grid is so important. It includes perspectives from a who’s who of grid specialists from Google, IBM, Harvard, University of Colorado, Duke Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Xcel Energy, CNT-Energy, National Grid, Pacific Gas & Electric, American Electric Power, The Economist magazine, and GE Energy.

Read more at GE Reports.