With the U.S. facing potentially crippling shortages of electricity over the next 20 years, primarily as a result of the utility industry being forced away from coal-fired, nuclear and other forms of central generation, residential consumers are going to be required to use less electricity.  The process of “encouraging” that reduction in consumption today generally is called “demand response”.  Some 20 years ago, it was called “demand-side management”.

I was reminded of this evolution of terms earlier this week in a conversation with Niraj Bhargava, CEO of Energate, Ottawa, Canada.  We were discussing residential demand response in the context of “smart grid” and AMI (advanced metering infrastructure).  It seems that everyone from politicians to the clerk at the corner grocery store has heard about smart grid and the tremendous “hype” surrounding it as the proposed solution of the impending requirement that residential consumers use less electricity.

It was at this point that Bhargava reminded me that smart grid and AMI really isn’t required to enable residential demand response.  It never has been, and people 20 years ago knew it.

“Approximately 50 percent of all residences have broadband access to the Internet, and regional penetration (including most cities and towns) exceeds 80%,” Bhargava pointed out.  With this in mind, Bhargava’s company has created a new “plug-and-play” device and system called “Consumer Connected Demand Response (CCDR) that uses the Internet to essentially accomplish demand response without smart grid or AMI.  There are other, similar systems on the market, although mostly forgotten in the “smart grid” hype.

The CCDR system provides an IP Bridge in the home that can be connected to a Zigbee network and Zigbee Smart Energy-compliant devices in the homes.  This way, the utility can send signals to the home, and the devices, to shave peak demand, or any time there is a shortage of supply.  No AMI meter is required, although CCDR can be configured to communicate with one, if one is present.

The interesting thing about this approach—one that was envisioned under DSM 20 years ago—is that the utility investment is very small, when compared with the hundreds of billions required to install AMI at every residence.  As Bhargava points out, such an Internet-based system could even provide a “bridge” until AMI is installed everywhere (only about 20% of homes now have smart meters), or even make them unnecessary for DR. 

Utilities that already have installed AMI are being inundated by data from hourly reads, or more-frequently, but these massive data are not really required to reduce consumption, or bill for consumption.  If a homeowner is signaled through a CCDR-like system that prices are going up, or there just isn’t enough electricity to go around, appropriate measures can be taken (by the homeowner or the utility by signaling in-home devices) and those measures (or lack of them) will be reflected in the bill at the end of the month.

AMI offers other benefits, including automatic connect/disconnect, load research, power quality measurement, etc., but it really isn't required just for reducing residential consumption.  That can be done much less expensively with utility-connected load management through a system such as CCDR.  It doesn't hurt to remember that despite all the mostly politically inspired "hype" of today, there is more than one way to skin this cat, and it doesn't necessarily have to be the most expensive way.