Could You Let Me Off With a Warning?

A while back I wrote of the public backlash against PG&E’s smart meter deployments in Bakersfield, CA (see Incident in Bakersfield). Since that time a lawsuit has been filed against the utility. As a result, PG&E has slowed their pace of smart meter deployments in Bakersfield, however they maintain that the new meters have been working correctly. Moreover, it was the combination of approved price hikes over the past year and a longer, hotter summer that lead to the higher electric bills.

Central to the educational shortcomings of PG&E’s smart meter deployment program are the lack of tools and incentives for customers to stay knowledgeable about their energy usage, particularly once they have real-time energy usage data via the smart meter.

The smart meter is the first and most essential component of a smart grid enabled home. The advantage to PG&E’s rapid deployment strategy (12,000 installations per day) is that they can install these across their entire customer base of 10 million customers by 2011. The disadvantage of this strategy is that customers are missing out on the tools and services that give them greater control of their energy usage (see Moving Beyond an Energy Conservation Mindset…Scenario 1: Smart Meters installed without complementary in-home energy monitoring and management device(s)).

Getting your smart meter installed is not like getting your cable TV installed. The “utility guy” is not there to answer all your questions and make sure everything runs smoothly going forward. At least this will not be the case until you receive an in-home energy management display from the likes of Tendril Networks.

At a recent industry conference, Tendril CEO, Adrian Tuck, commented on the danger of utilities delaying the installation of tools like the in-home display once a smart meter has been installed. Despite the self-serving commentary, Mr. Tuck is right!

Even in the absence of formal in-home displays, most smart grid residents should have online access to their energy usage, either through the utility or other online tools such as Google’s PowerMeter (available for FREE). Yet, without the right education and incentives to check our usage, why should we bother?

Utilities could certainly create the incentive for these tools by jacking up our electricity rates, but this would no doubt create a huge backlash and possibly stunt the entire modernization effort. Another one of Mr. Tuck’s suggestions is to frame the picture for customers differently. For example, conserve energy or face rolling blackouts. Framing the message is essential, however this particular alternative to energy conservation may be an ineffectual threat especially if it does not materialize on a consistent basis.

At the end of the day, this is largely an energy conservation effort with the near term goal of reducing strain on the grid and pushing out the building of new, costlier power generation infrastructure.

Utilities and all stakeholders in the value chain need to adopt and promote multi-faceted and enduring education programs that inform customers about what’s new today and what’s on the horizon. In the short term, this is indeed higher electrical rates and the potential for more costly blackouts if our energy consumption continues on the current trajectory unchecked.

If we want to avoid the Electrical Speeding Ticket analogy where large numbers of customers are facing a costly and unexpected utility bill, then we’ll need the tools, education, and incentives to take greater control of our energy usage. Short of this, a more effective approach to issuing speeding tickets is to pull people over, let them know how “fast” they’ve been driving, familiarize them with the cost of the ticket, and let them off with a warning.

In the meantime, if you’ve had a smart meter installed without a complementary in-home display, don’t hold your breath until one is delivered. Higher rates are on the horizon. It will pay to get smart today about your usage.