Understanding and Connecting Smart Meters, Smart Grids, and Smart Markets.
- Lynne Kiesling
March 16th, 2012
Via Earthtechling, an interesting – but not unsurprising (at least to this blog’s authors) – report on the minimal impact that smart meter use has upon power savings. For without smart markets to actually give people a chance to see real price signals and make informed decisions about how to place value on behavioral changes, a digital read out of power use is not going to motivate much action. As the article notes:
Smart meters, which can provide real-time energy use information to consumers, are yielding “modest” savings in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland, according to a study out from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). The study said residential electricity savings tied to energy-use feedback ranged from none at all to 19.5 percent, with average savings of 3.8 percent.
The highest levels of savings, at 19.5 percent, came in Northern Ireland, where a prepayment system was combined with real-time feedback. Under prepayment schemes, consumers pay for a set amount of electricity, and only receive more electricity with further payment.
“The high level of average savings in this case may be due, in part, to the fact that prepayment households were likely already monitoring their consumption and may have a strong motivation to keep costs down because of a high level of fuel poverty and high retail electricity rates,” the report noted.
On the other end of the spectrum, two pilot projects reviewed in the ACEEE report found that there was no effect in providing real-time information to households about their electricity use.
The report also highlighted a small portion of the population, called “cyber-sensitives,” who are more inclined to save electricity based on real-time information, but the report said that this group is hard to identify because it cuts across demographic lines. Researchers involved with the study say that means real-time feedback from smart meter may be used most cost effectively as a “boutique” energy strategy, targeting those individuals who actively monitor their energy use.
Despite what it found as only modest gains in energy savings, researchers said the study will shed light into how to best design and market various types of smart meters that will help people use them as their needs require.
“This level of savings is modest but encouraging, given the number of factors that appear to influence the use of feedback devices,” Ben Foster, senior analyst at ACEEE and lead author of the report, said in a statement.
“While by no means an exhaustive list, these factors include the design of the devices and the types of content they provide, the degree to which these devices enable the various tasks people want to accomplish using the information provided, negotiations between members of the household that influence energy use, and perhaps a predisposition in responding to information about energy use.”
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Based on decades of experience and interest in conservation, Monty Simus believes that a truly “smart” grid must be a “transactive” grid, unshackled from its current status as a so-called “natural monopoly.”
In short, an unlocked grid must adopt and harness the power of markets to incentivize individual users, linked to each other on a large scale, who change consumptive behavior in creative ways that drive efficiency and bring equity to use of the planet's finite and increasingly scarce resources.