Courtesy of The Energy Collective, an interesting article on the smart grid, in particular the efforts to empower consumers, enabling and motivating them to exercise more control over their use of electricity. The author makes some wise points about simplicity vs. complexity, and the need to motivate folks to see electricity as anything but a utility-provided commodity. Smart markets anyone?
“…Finally we come to the subject of consumer empowerment. This is a bit of a misnomer, since the object is not really to empower consumers but rather to encourage consumers to make better choices about how they use energy. This is where a lot of the smart metering and net metering and real time charging and networking seems to come in and where a lot of the prospective business profits from sales of new software and collection of consumer data seems to come in as well.
Getting the average retail electricity consumer to care about his or her electricity bill and usage is a tall order. One speaker from a utility talked about the need to educate consumers about these new empowering technologies and lessen their concerns about loss of privacy. Another speaker speculated that what was needed was some sort of new energy “killer app”—a game system perhaps—that will get retail consumers thinking about how they use electricity. And, yes, this is the part of the article where you should be holding your wallet tight.
There is unquestionably a need for retail electricity consumers to use energy more efficiently. But waiting for consumers, who have always seen and likely will always see electricity as a utility commodity, much like water, to become interested in how it is used is not a good bet. Pouring billions of dollars into smart meters, education programs, net metering and the like are questionable investments, empowerment, networking and other nice buzz words notwithstanding.
The better model for the Smart Grid, at least as far as its interface with most retail consumers, is what I would describe as the On Star model. On Star is, of course, the highly successful communications system that is available today in many General Motors vehicles. The On Star system is highly engineered and very complex. And yet the consumer interface is, by design, a single button that the customer simply presses when he or she wants help. The complexity is on the GM side of the button, not the consumer side.
There is a lesson in On Star for the Smart Grid: The grid does not need to be, and should not be, that smart. It is cheaper, simpler and, from the perspective of the vast majority of retail consumers, preferable, to leave the complexity of the Smart Grid entirely on the utility side of the meter. By way of example, utilities, not retail consumers, should be charged with balancing electricity load. This can be done by wheeling power into the distribution system and storing it there for consumer use on demand, rather than requiring consumers to alter their patterns of consumption. That may not be a great solution if your business is selling software, consumer data, educational services or peak energy, but it would make a lot of sense for retail consumers and for the grid…”
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