With the difficulty of traveling these days, I like to bring you insights from conferences around the United States. I have found the time between the conference and the flight home to be a good time to reflect on critical discussions from each conference. This time I attended the Smart Energy West Coast conference in San Diego, Calif. Before I get into the conference proceedings, I have to point out that I hope I never another hexagon. I never really had anything against hexagons, but this conference changed that. It took place in the Emerald Plaza Westin, which is known for its “crystalline” (which apparently translates to hexagonal) structure. Everything inside and outside the building was a hexagon—hexagon elevators, hexagon elevator buttons, hexagon signs, hexagon desks, hexagon flooring, hexagon ceiling patterns and hexagon-angled walls. Oh, the list goes on and on. The building probably took the hexagon theme down to the subatomic level. It wasn’t too bad to begin with, but I was surrounded by hexagons for two days and there was no way to escape them. Anyway, enough of my newfound intolerance for hexagons and geometry review.
PG&E progress
Jim Meadows with PG&E gave an update on the company’s smart meter deployment. It sounds like the company has about 3.4 million meters deployed out of 10 million meters. Of those meters installed, PG&E is reading and billing on about 3 million of those meters. The company’s biggest benefit appears to come from what it calls “meter reader capture.” PG&E has currently captured (or eliminated) 214 of 900 meter reading positions. Those 214 former meter readers have been offered another job within the company. PG&E has also been working on a critical peak pricing (CPP) pilot, which had about 10,000 customers last year. About seven out of 10 participants saved money over their regular utility bill. Across nine CPP events from May to October, customers saved about 16.6% on average over their non-CPP structure.
Smart sub-metering
A lot the smart meter focus these days is on single-family homes, but not multi-family homes. Yet there are some key differences when moving forward with smart metering for a standalone home versus smart sub-metering for a 21-story apartment building. Constraints on smart sub-metering include the local regulatory landscape, the landlord-tenant relationship and condominium board progressiveness. In particular, with the landlord-tenant relationship, there is something called “split incentive.” This occurs when the tenant pays the utility bill. Since the landlord is not paying the bill, he or she has no incentive to focus on energy efficiency. And the renter won’t make long-term energy efficiency upgrades—like purchasing a new refrigerator—because he or she often doesn’t have a long-term commitment to property.
Smart appliance progress
Whirlpool discussed some of its progress on smart appliances. It sounds like the technologies are there in terms of smart devices that would go into appliances. In fact, by 2015, Whirlpool plans on giving all of its electronically controlled appliances the capability to receive smart grid signals. One interesting point was that smart appliances would complement renewable energy well, since the appliances could adapt quickly to rapid changes in the grid that will likely come with renewables. The only thing that concerned him about the technology was putting the “right economic incentives” in place to make these smart appliances economically practical, essentially some kind of government intervention. The speaker thought a cash for clunkers type program would do the trick (hey, getting $4,500 off anything would probably work for a lot people, except for maybe a hexagon-shaped pool or a hexagonal toaster), which I think he was joking about, but I couldn’t really tell. Someone asked about the possibility of retrofitting appliances with smart technologies, but Whirlpool doesn’t really think that will work. Since most appliances now can really just turn on and off, that is all they would really be able to if the utility needed to adjust the appliance. This would not make for the best customer experience (think of the dryer or frig).
Thanks for reading!
H.
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