If people are not watching and paying attention on what's going on in energy, then they should. This time its the 'enernet', not the internet will transform lives of many people.

Across the country, incumbent network providers operate on highly centralised networks in their respective cities. Then comes the scrappy local outfits who starts serving the market with innovative, distrubuted technology.

These sort of startups creates a competition, and the new network comes up atop the legacy network. That was the backdrop 30 years ago when a little thing called the 'internet' emerged. Many startups like CompuServe, AOL, EarthLink, NetCom and a host of local ISPs kicked off the analog to digital conversion by offering internet access over existing cable and telco networks.

Today, things like SolarCity, Sunrun and others have moved off the fossil fuels and into clean energy supported by smart equipments, services and software, offered a top utility networks. This time, we will the emergence of enernet.

Enernet. Noun. A dynamic, distributed, redundant and multi-participant energy network built around clean energy generation, storage and delivery and serving as the foundation for smart cities.

Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison, seeded the enernet evolution probably more than a decade ago. He devised a breakthrough financing model that made software affordable and quite scalable. He is a smart person who uses his strategic mind to unfold this.

At the heart, enernet is the foundation for a smart-tech city. including 'Internet of Things', distributed systems, interconnected backbones and networking technologies, EV-charging services and autonomous vehicles to include a few.

From the enernet evolution will come smart cities that are in order of magnitude smarter, healthier and safer. The new network will also present quantum leaps in energy security and emergency resilience that can stand in the face of superstorms or cyberattacks.

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