Smart Meters Require Smarter Installers and Customers

...probably ran those smart meters in Windows Vista...

O.K., o.k., the smart grid isn't perfect. As one of my readers exuberantly contended in a phone call several weeks ago, smart meters have been drawing complaints from customers seeing inexplicable price spikes.

Now Pacific Gas & Electric admits 23,000 customers may have gotten bad billing from the new gizmos. Releasing a whole batch of reports on its smart meters yesterday, PG&E says it has "identified 'issues' related to wireless communication, data storage, meter installation, and accuracy." Says PG&E VP Helen Burt:

Presented in detail, the information here reaffirms the facts we previously outlined for customers: that more than 99 percent of the SmartMeter™ devices we have installed are performing exactly as designed. This is a success rate that represents a significant advance over traditional meter technology, delivering more accurate bills to our customers along with more detailed information about their energy use [PG&E press release, 2010.05.10].

Smart meters may perform more reliably than the old metal spinner screwed to your house, but the inaccuracy in old meters is more often like the inaccuracy of old watches: they run slow, meaning the inaccuracy is in the customer's favor.

As is often the case with computers, smart meter glitches may be PEBMAT: Problem Exists Between Meter And Truck. Texas utility Oncor has installed nearly 800,000 smart meters, and in March it acknowledged that 7600 were installed incorrectly.

Customers and companies can resolve inaccurate billings and installation screw-ups. A bigger problem, notes CNET, comes when we install smart meters but don't give customers the tools to take advantage of them. A smart meter isn't just a new black box that we tack on the back of the house and mostly ignore. The real advantage comes when homeowners and businesses get the software to monitor and act on all the information the smart meter can provide about electric usage and rates.

But hey: we mostly traded horses for Model T's; we'll likely trade mechanical meters for smart meters. We'll figure out the problems, we'll create the customer service rules... and maybe we'll save a little energy.

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p.s.: Midwest ISO is installing synchrophasors to turn the whole Midwestern transmission system into a smart grid. The synchrophasors will, among other things, make it easier for the grid to handle variable power sources like wind power.

pp.s.: Nuts! Microsoft is getting into smart meters. Get ready for the blue screen of death... on your microwave!

Green Notes: Sioux Falls Smart Speakers, Florida Super-Smart Grid

Good Friday goes grey, but this morning's Web reading has me feeling green!

In local green news, the Plain Green Conference is bringing all sorts of smart people to Sioux Falls April 28 and 29 to talk about green building, green science, and green thinking:

The Plain Green Conference and Marketplace is two days of advancing sustainability on the Northern Plains. Connect, learn and take action with hundreds of other attendees and star-power keynotes, plus green exhibitors and two days of workshops and breakouts (conservation design planning, green healthcare, eco-affordable home building, green office makeovers, LEED, straw bale construction, EPA compliance, permaculture and much more).

Cool! Here's co-organizer Joe Bartmann's pitch:



Two big speakers on the agenda: Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity; and Mitchell Joachim, co-founder of Terrefuge.

If you attend Plain Green, you might find yourself conversing with fellow South Dakotans about the smart grid. That innovation, such as the smart grid planned by our Sioux Valley Energy, is supposed to make better use of electricity. But Tallahasse, Florida, is building a super-smart grid to save electricity, gas, and water! The city will implement smart meters and software to help customers monitor and optimize their use of all three utilities. The system will also help utility crews locate and fix problems faster.

This three-in-one smart grid, the first such system in the U.S., could save the city $100K a year in current dollars. According to Mayor John Marks, "We started the investment in smart grid technology before it took off as a smart concept nationally. That's important for our customers as the bottom line is that they will be able to save energy, save water and save money." That's green everyone can love!

Smart Grid Saves You Money with Transparent, Timely Energy Pricing

Those darn greenies and their good ideas, saving us money....

I was just reading my Sioux Valley Energy newsletter when I came upon another really good explanation (available here in PDF) of how the smart grid will save you and me money.

Sioux Valley Energy is getting $4 million in stimulus money to cover about half the cost of installing 23,000 smart meters—that's a meter for everyone Sioux Valley juices up. Once those meters are installed, Sioux Valley will be able to implement variable power pricing based on peak load and time of day. When demand spikes, utilities have to buy more expensive supplementary power. The power I use for my computer during peak hours costs more than the power I use in the middle of the night. Smart meters will allow Sioux Valley to charge me different rates for the power I consume based on when I use it.

Sioux Valley CEO Don Marker explains it this way in his column in the December newsletter:

The idea is that these smart meters will allow you to monitor, whether that be through the Internet, via email or by text messages, your electric usage at any given point in time. So you can make the choice whether or not to run your dishwasger when the price of electricity is really high, or wait until the price goes down. In the future, "smart" appliances will allow you to program them to coordinate with the price of electricity [Don Marker, "$4-Million Grant for Smart Grid: Unique Opportunity or SVE Members," Sioux Valley Energy Connections, Dec. 2009].

Smart meters will let us see electricity prices on our computers the same way we see gas prices on the signs all over town. We'll see the numbers right in front of us, and we'll be able to adjust our power usage to save some money. (Of course, I suppose it's possible that there could be some crazy reverse feedback spike when we pennypinchers see the electricity price suddenly drop, shout "Buy Buy Buy!" and all crank up our washing machines at once. Smart meters should make a great thesis topic for some eager MBA!)

Sioux Valley says the smart grid technology will help it put off building new power plants and infrastructure, which means of perhaps $4 million a year. In other words, Sioux Valley's eight-million-dollar investment—half from customers, half from taxpayers and deficit spending via the stimulus—could pay for itself in two years. Hmmm... looks like all that deficit spending could actually leave more money in our grandkids' pockets.

Smart grid technology makes sense whether you're a treehugger or a pennypincher. Let a few fringe elements try to stir Big Brother fears; I'm ready for Sioux Valley to hook me up and save me some money!

Argus Overblows Privacy Concerns on Smart Meters

That Sioux Falls paper does a fine job of digging for controversy where there is little, running a front-page story on the pros and cons of smart grid technology. Sioux Valley Electric is getting ready to use federal stimulus dollars to install 23,000 smart meters here in eastern South Dakota. Smart meters will give you and your utility more information about and more control over how much electricity you use. Just one part of the smart grid, smart meters have been shown to be able to lower electric bills by 15%, and in some cases as much as 50%.

Against all the potential benefits of the smart grid—and Mike Knutson at Reimagine Rural offers a great five-point response on why smart meters are just plain sliced-bread-super—the only con that Sioux Falls paper can find is faintly Tea-Party-esque Big Brother talk. They cite a Bob Sullivan MSNBC article, Wired, and an out-of-state think tank who raise privacy concerns.

(Citing MSNBC and Wired... that Sioux Falls paper is sounding a lot like a blog....)

Not so long ago, my privacy meter might have sounded an alarm as well. Sioux Valley will know when I microwave some popcorn... it's 1984! Aaaahhh!

But if you really want to get bent out of shape about the privacy issues associated with energy-saving smart meters, then you'd better be prepared to decouple yourself from much more than the electric grid:

1. Cut up your credit cards: Citigroup et al. have detailed records of all that stuff you buy and when and where you buy it.
2. Smash your cell phone: its GPS chip can tell law enforcement exactly where you are.
3. Unwire OnStar... or ride your bike!
4. Get off the Internet: Google knows much more about you than Sioux Valley Electric ever will.
   
5. Repeal the Patriot Act (warrantless wiretaps? there's a real privacy freak-out).
   

So just curious: do any of you have privacy concerns about smart meters? If so, what other aspects of modern technology will you abandon to protect your privacy?

A Really Smart Grid Supports Local Energy Production over Long-Distance Transmission

I'm all about President Obama's plan to pump $3.4 billion into the smart grid, technology that will lower your electric bill, make our energy distribution system more resilient, and take a big chunk out of the $150 billion annual negative impact of power outages. I even appreciate the President's shout-out to South Dakota, as he noted smart-grid tech is essential to promoting renewable energy and supporting the longer-distance transmission lines that would let Chicago utilities plug in to South Dakota wind power (and solar power! Don't forget our big solar potential!).

But hold your horses, Mr. President: who says we should build our energy policy around long-distance transmission? Not John Farrell, who's coming to Brookings Saturday to talk about why we should say no to transmission and focus on local energy independence:

Transmission legislation moving through Congress would preempt longstanding state regulatory authority over transmission line approval and siting. The goal is to speed the construction of a $100 to 200 billion interstate transmission superhighway, bringing solar power from the Southwest and wind from the Great Plains to the coasts.

Why is this problematic? Let’s ignore for a moment that most people wouldn’t care to live by a 150 foot tower running through a 200 foot swath of denuded landscape. Or to have their land seized for this purpose by eminent domain.

Many states oppose the new transmission superhighway for two reasons. One, it’s expensive. Two, it undermines efforts to reap the economic rewards of renewable energy self-reliance [John Farrell, "Say No to Transmission," Marc Gunther's blog, 2009.10.24].

Farrell says we would do more to promote clean energy and local economic development by producing our own alternative energy and using that power locally. Forget the tree-hugging: on the purely economic side, Farrell says one locally owned wind turbine can produce a million dollars of economic activity. Plus, "Locally owned wind projects can create twice the jobs and 3 to 4 times the economic impact of absentee owned projects."

Thanks for your forward thinking on energy and technology, Mr. President, but let's aim more of that $3.4 billion in smart grid money toward supporting the efforts of states and communities to produce their own energy.

Pass ACESA Part VI: The Smart Grid

[Part 6 of a series based on my conversation with Matt McGovern, Matt McLarty, and Rick Hauffe about America's energy future.]

Suppose I offered you a way to cut your electric usage (and your bill) 15%. Would you say, "I don't believe in global warming, so no thanks"?

The fiscal conservatives in my house sure wouldn't. That's another reason we like H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA). Even if you own vacation property in Canada and are cheering global warming (a position I find perfectly understandable), or even if you frown on drowning Tuvalu but don't think American energy policy can help, you'll have a hard time coming up with an argument against more efficient, reliable use of electricity.

Pass ACESA
a Madville Times series

1. Cap and Trade Works
2. The New China Syndrome
3. Market Solving Already?
4. Techno-Hope
5. Perfect vs. Good
6. Smart Grid
7. The Big Picture

Read H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act

ACESA offers big support for energy efficiency by supporting the development of smart grid technology (see Sections 141–146, among others). Think of our current electrical transmission grid as the Tin Man. Add a brain—or lots of little computers—to better manage distribution and peak loads. That's the smart grid (or at least the shortest description I can give you here).

The smart grid does a lot: makes it easier to move power from fluctuating sources like wind and solar where its needed, reeduces the chances of power outages, and strengthens our power supply against natural and manmade disruptions. Of course, it involves computers, which means the smart grid requires hacker-proofing. But that's not stopping GE and the U.S. military from working on smart microgrid tech that could keep the lights for Marine bases and others in emergencies. Smart grid tech could also support the kind of local self-sufficient power grids that would foil al-Qaeda hackers' dreams of shutting down us infidels' power nationwide (not to mention bust up the business model of giant power corporations).

I'll let Tony handle some of the bigger engineering issues (he's studied power systems engineering; he'll have some expertise to contribute!). Let's focus on what the smart grid means on the small scale: i.e., in your house. One aspect of the smart grid is essentially load management with more computing power and more personal control. Your utility puts a computer brain in your electric meter and connects it wirelessly to various appliances. You access the system, review your household's energy usage, and set goals for your energy usage. You program in times when you won't be home or won't otherwise really expect to use lots of power. The computer does the rest.

Cold day comes, wind chill 40 below, Sioux Valley hits peak load, your computer jumps in and eases off power consumption by shutting off your fridge for a few minutes, your water heater by a few more. Your home portion of the smart grid can do the same thing on regular days: AC kicks in for a bit, the system can keep your power consumption down by powering down other appliances that aren't in demand. Do that in every house all year, and you can get some serious power savings.

Smart grid technology isn't pie-in-the-sky stuff. Heartland is working with the Rural Learning Center to examine smart grid tech in Howard, South Dakota. IBM and Consert just completed a six-month trial of smart-grid technology like this in North Carolina. With controllers attached to hot water heaters, air conditioners, and pool pumps, residential customers average 15% energy savings. Some customers saved 40%; one cut power usage by 50%.

Improvements in efficiency have already cut our annual increase in electricity demand from 7–8% back in the 1960s to about 1% now. The EIA predicts average demand to increase at about that rate over the next 20 years, a total 26% increase by 2030. Your power company makes plans to build big, new, expensive power plants based on numbers like that.

Now imagine if we built a smart grid and cut our electric usage by another 15%. That drops the total demand increase through 2030 from 26% to 7% from current levels (the numbers sound weird, but trust me: there are exponents involved). That's a whole lot of power that Basin Electric doesn't have to generate. That's a whole lot of power plants we can wait to build in 2035 instead of 2015. That's a whole lot of capital that your power co-op won't have to get by raising your rates (like the 26.6% rate increase Black Hills Power needs, in part to build a new power plant in Gillette). That's less coal we mine and burn now and more non-renewable fossil fuel reserves we leave for our grandkids, just in case they need it. That's more time we have to improve wind and solar and other alternative energy technologies to replace fossil fuels.

These potential energy savings are one of the reasons it is so important to understand that the American Clean Energy and Security Act is not just cap and trade. Putting a market price on carbon emissions is an important part of ACESA, but the bill contains much more than that one policy. The smart grid is another part of this legislation that will put America on track for a sensible and sustainable energy future.