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Monday, October 26, 2009 | Latest Update: 6:15PM
Eric Wesoff 10 26 09, 6:15 PM

Smart Grid Backlash

How can you be against the smart grid? Or against smart meters?

Isn't it like being anti-motherhood or anti-apple pie or anti-education? Apparently not, according to a recent citizen uprising in Fresno. And a recent smart grid panel I moderated.

First the panel. I moderated a relatively contentious panel at the Netherlands America Foundation on Thursday night. Execs from smart grid hardware and software startups including:

All chimed in with the warning that:

  • A $2.2 billion meter deployment would have a questionable ROI if most of the savings came from reduced truck rolls 
  • The smart meters were not smart enough
  • Consumers don't want Big Brother controlling their thermostat and appliances

Even a panelist from the SF PUC was dubious of the value of the smart meters. As for the firms themselves, APT has been profitably integrating smart energy systems in the enterprise for 15 years – deploying smart energy before the term was invented.  iDo and HAE are start-ups looking to add intelligence to the building or home energy system but not at the meter.

On to the citizen uprising...

Excerpts from an October 22 article in The Fresno Bee:

    More than 100 people packed a town hall meeting in downtown Fresno to vent their frustration with PG&E's newest metering technology – SmartMeters – that customers say has led to faulty spikes in utility bills. "The meters, in my opinion, are not very smart," PG&E customer Joe Riojas told Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez, D-Shafter. The meeting lasted four-and-a-half hours. No one spoke in favor of the Smart Meters.

    Many customers brought their PG&E bills to show Florez their skyrocketing costs. For example, Don Vercellini of Fresno said his bill recently went from $500 a month to $1,173. "It's straight-out fraud. I want my money back," he said.

    Florez complained that the technology for customers to check usage will not be in place for years.

    Said Florez: "People don't see the value [in this program]. They just see higher cost, and that makes them angry."

You wouldn't like Fresno when it's angry.

Jeff St. John blogged about it here. According to St. John's reporting: Those complaints have focused attention on PG&E's $2.2 billion, 10 million smart meter deployment, with the California Public Utilities Commission demanding that PG&E find a third party to investigate.

But PG&E has already tested many customers' smart meters – made by General Electric and Landis+Gyr and networked by Silver Spring Networks – and have not found any problems with how they're working, according to PG&E spokesman Denny Boyles.

Rather than malfunctioning meters, PG&E thinks the higher bills have come from its two rate hikes in the past 12 months, plus a hot summer that led to many Central Valley residents cranking their air conditioners to beat the heat, Boyles said.

With the feds ready to launch another wave of smart grid funding – it would be helpful for the public to actually want these products and services. And to actually feel some immediate benefit and value from the smart grid.

It can't be just about benefits for the utilities.

‹ Older | $3.4B in Smart Grid Grants Coming Tomorrow? Fisker's Cheap Hybrid Coming in Late 2012, After the Model S | Newer ›

Comments

  • Peter A 10/27/09 12:23 AM

    And here I thought I was the only doubter. Granted, some of these people probably wear tin foil hats ...

     Reply
  • JoeJoe 10/27/09 12:33 AM

    A bill of $1173 is rather ridiculous but you can’t just throw out a number and scream bloody murder. If the kWh usage is dubious you can ask other questions. How many people are in your household? Do you have a pool? When was your home built and what’s the square footage? Are you running a well pump? Do you run your snack food business from your residence?  And oh yeah, why do you live in Fresno? At 44 cents per khw bills can add up relatively quickly.

    The pictures are a nice but the information is limited and overly emotional. Remember Dune Eric, Fear is the mind-killer - Don’t feed it…

     Reply
  • russ 10/27/09 1:14 AM

    What about time of day rates? Here I have one of the semi-smart meters but if I elected to use TOD rates rather than a flat rate I would pay more.

    The 1173 USD bill should have the customer checking everything - maybe there is a problem with one piece of equipment as well. What new has been added on?

    If all the program does is raise rates then people obviously will not be happy. If having the smart meter only raises the monthly bill or benefits the power company then obviously they will not be happy.

     Reply
  • Greg 10/27/09 5:19 PM

    There is another technology that provides smart grid without having to spend a lot of money replacing meters. It can also be used to allow the consumer to request “Green” Power from a specific source like solar or wind. Cheaper than replacing meters and easy to add on appliances so you can turn off your plug from an ipod. Don’t just report the power / control it. This technology allows the power companies to selectively turn off devices to prevent brown outs and will even help the electric car industry because it lets you charge up at a friend’s house with the bill going to the car owner. Smart Grid is fantastic if done right and the projects are failing because they don’t use the right technology or approach. I will post more if there is interest in using a truly advanced, open and cheap smart grid system.

     Reply
  • jonathan 10/27/09 11:02 PM

    Oh Greg, do tell us more!!!

     Reply
  • Greg 10/28/09 1:06 AM

    I don’t know the rules with these posts by my email is (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
    The bulk of the current US spend is based on replacing meters with GE ones. The problem with this approach is that it is basically you have a dumb device reporting a signal back to the power station.
    There is another system (I assume advertising a firm is not allowed here) that lets you simply plug into your existing meters and is a smart device. There are a number of applications but the core ones are:
    1.  Replace a plug with a smart plug so that fridges, air conditioners, and stoves can not only report but be turned on and off.
    2.  Office buildings with more than one heater/air conditioner could have one or more automatically shut down by the grid in a fair and distributed manner versus simply shutting down areas. This allows for automated load balancing.
    3.  Since this is an open system lots of software programmers could add on features – I have contacted a few Ipod developers who may wish to sell an application that lets the consumer remotely manage their house.
    4.  Since the device is smart it can also request power from specific green resources or companies/governments could mandate that specific devices only use green power sources. Companies can contact me for details as to how this is done.
    5.  Transmission is done via a wide variety of existing channels including regular power lines so you don’t have to pay the phone companies tons of money for ongoing monitoring – this is also a problem with a lot of the current strategies.
    6.  Electric cars could start using these plugs to enable identifying the car as a green device and thus direct the utility charge to a separate account, much like having a gas card.
    7.  Those places that create energy and then sell it back into the grid can finally be truly used to offset energy usage. Today a lot of this power is simply passed back to the grid and there is no way as a consumer to say “I want to promote green power and only buy green power for my electric car” with this system you can.
    There are thousands of other applications but hopefully you get the idea. Current complaints are justified but it does not have to be that way. The money just approved today could go twice as far if this technology was implemented.

     Reply
      • StevePluvia 10/28/09 11:58 AM

        Greg, you can name the super-smart-plug company.  Pay no attention to the guys that show up in dark suits who kidnap your family, quarantine your computers and lock you in a dark room with Sylar.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylar
  • Phil 10/28/09 10:39 AM

    The main cause of a higher bill after the smart meter is installed is due to the old meter recording less than actual usage.  So assuming the customer mentioned in the article had no other weather or lifestyle related changes, its likely that it was a slow old meter.  People like to think that meters speed up, but its much more likely that they will slow down after 30 or more years of service.  So the question is, should the power company leave the old meter and give one customer a discount forever while the rest of us pay for it or should they continue with smart meter deployment?

     Reply
      • JoeJoe 10/28/09 12:28 PM

        Good point Phil.

        Does anyone know what the lifetime of traditional and dynamic meters are? What’s the average age of the meter fleet? You always see the cost of smart meters presented as X billion dollars but this doesn’t seem to take into account the regular turnover costs associated with traditional meters. Intuitively there’s a cost/savings going forward depending on the durability of dynamic vs. traditional meters. Has anyone seen an analysis that looks at this angle?
      • JoeJoe 10/28/09 2:17 PM

        I found some answers in this highly readable and very informative Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) overview: http://www.electric-efficiency.com/reports/deciding_on_smart_meters.pdf

        “Costs for automated remote meter reading are approximately $100 to $175 per meter. Adding demand response components (e.g., customer signaling, load control, other demand response equipment) adds another $100 to $350 per site.” See also Table 1

        “When the vehicle, training, health insurance, and other overhead expenses of manual reading are included, reducing or eliminating manual reading is often the largest single AMI benefit. It typically constitutes one third to two thirds of the total AMI benefit in traditional utility operations.”

        “The book value of in-service meters is often substantial because meters have a long life in service and on
        the financial books. Meters are normally entered into the books at their installed cost, typically something
        between $50 and $65 per meter for a simple residential kWh meter. This usually includes the purchase
        cost of the meter, the utility’s cost of receiving, testing (if any), handling, and installation at the customer
        premise. A meter that is capitalized at $60 and depreciated in a straight line over 30 years will have a book value of $20 after 20 years of service. If this meter is replaced (rather than retrofitted) during an AMI
        deployment, the utility incurs a write-down or a “loss” of $20. This can be a very significant addition to
        the AMI system’s cost-per-meter, which may range from $100 to $200.”
  • Thinking 10/28/09 10:59 PM

    There is a huge list of reasons to move to smart metering/AMI.  The utility can save a lot of money through the following.  First they can reduce meter reading costs, then collections costs since some allow remote on-off. Phone center costs since high bills can be handled better and faster since the utility will possess the 24 hour profile of the customer.  So no more claims that I didn’t run the heater or AC.  One click of the button and you can tell them when and for how long.  Some will still argue but the number should be less. Also, millions have been spent on load control systems.  With this metering, there is no need for load control on the AC, just send a signal to their thermostat and raise it a couple of degrees when needed. Assumes they install special Tstat. The customer notices it less and still gets load control credits.  In addition to all these benefits, the utility will be able to locate outages without anyone calling them in, and by knowing the exact location they will save money and response time to restore. When you add all these benefits to the 800 pound gorrilla that some percentage of the old meters are slow and the new will start bringing in that revenue, its a no brainer.  In fact the only concern they might have is that if people figure out how to use the profile information the meter can provide to save energy sales might drop and I don’t think the utilities for the most part want to take that chance.

     Reply
  • Steve Yang, EE 11/7/09 11:36 AM

    The massive protest at a townhall meeting in Fresno about extra-ordinary electric bills after installation of Smart Meters raises questions. And did/will the $20 some millions allocated to utilities to educate customers about Smart Meters help? It does not look good for Smart Grid in which the Smart Meter is lead card.
    I believe the Smart Meter roll-out was not handled properly.  CPUC should have anticipated and have contingency measures to deal with doubled or tripled electric bills.  Individual rate payers were left to fend for themselves.  Shouldn’t there be an experimental phase program for Smart Meter roll-out?

     Reply

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