Sioshansi F.P. Smart Grid: Integrating Renewable, Distributed & Efficient Energy
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When the home management system has received information
back from the queries, it will send the results to display back
to the iPad using the Wi-Fi within the home. As example of
running the app is shown in Figure 15.8.
Figure 15.8
Results of “Going to Bed” app.
Source: CSC, May 2011
From these results, the parents might decide to “Turn off” the
light and gaming system in Ted's room, and stay up a few
minutes longer to move the clothes from the washing machine
to the dryer before going to bed. And, they'll probably decide
to close the refrigerator door and let the dog in for the night.
The “Going to Bed” app might also feature an alert if
anything changes. When Lucy slips back into her room, the
parents could be alerted, and if Ted turns the gaming system
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back on after 30 minutes, they will be alerted that something
is amiss.
As the kids grow up, the parents should be able to add,
remove, or change features of the “Going to Bed” app
depending on their needs. For example, by the time the kids
are in high school, the parents may go to bed hours before
their kids and may only want to be alerted to a gaming system
being on if it's 3 AM. Making these changes should be an
intuitive user experience. It shouldn't require programming
skills on the part of consumers to make adjustments to
popular apps or to create a new one. In fact, it should be
possible for consumers to go online to download new apps
available from other consumers or vendors, similar to
downloading apps for smart phones today.
Conclusions
How the smart grid is manifested in people's living rooms has
evolved since the concept was first imagined by the industry.
It began with utilities directly controlling large loads like air
conditioners and electric heaters and moved forward to
price-responsive demand response. Through pilot tests, the
industry learned that automating the response of large loads,
generally the same ones involved with direct load control
programs, increased peak load reduction and made it more
convenient for consumers to participate. As shown in test
results from PowerCentsDC and verified by many other pilot
tests, consumers liked dynamic pricing, preferring it to
standard pricing by a high margin. With technology advances,
it became feasible to offer all customers the opportunity to
participate in demand response programs.
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As the smart grid moves into consumer living rooms, the
focus will significantly change to marketing to consumers, a
very different world than providing electricity over a
regulated distribution network. Color and style may trump
practical considerations. If society at large wants consumers
to invest in home automation that incorporates energy
efficiency and demand response, it must be sold to them on
the value it will bring. It may be easier to forecast weather
than to forecast what products will catch consumer's fancy
and become a must-have in their eyes.
Looking at recent spending habits of consumers, it's clear that
they spend much of their discretionary spending on
entertainment and convenience. In the best of all worlds, new
smart grid products should not make consumers choose
between energy and entertainment or between energy and
convenience. Instead, the new products should roll it all up
together and offer customers home automation where they
can enjoy unprecedented levels of convenience, and oh by the
way, you can save money on your energy bill at the same
time and increase the security of your home.
It turns out that the home automation and appliance industries
will likely drive consumer interest in and adoption of smart
appliances, with utilities and regulators playing important but
not leading roles. With energy considerations bundled
together with applications for convenience, entertainment,
and security, consumers won't have to turn their lives upside
down to lower their carbon footprint, any more than people
have to understand what a printer driver actually does to use a
printer.
In order for home automation and appliance vendors to have
success in selling their new products such as smart home,
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smart washing machines, smart TVs, and so on, many
stakeholders need to work together to build the underlying
framework: standards, smart metering, dynamic pricing—all
are necessary to set the stage for smart homes. Policy makers
are in a tough spot, pushing investments in smart metering
and changes in the structure of pricing plans in an industry
built around exhaustive regulatory hearings, in the midst of a
slow recovery from a global recession. There is ample
research backing their approach showing that consumers,
when given the opportunity, overwhelmingly prefer dynamic
pricing compared to standard pricing. The industry should
endeavor to reduce barriers to access to dynamic pricing,
which is one of the reasons to hope for the ubiquitous
deployment of smart metering.
The home automation service offerings are already emerging.
What's needed now is to pull together the various strands and
position them together on a platform that is inclusive of all
smart appliance brands and doesn't require consumers to be
able to write code to customize apps for their household.
Great strides have been made to reduce the complexity of user
interfaces to smart appliances by taking advantage of the
talents of people who have experience in designing consumer
products. This same set of talents needs to used in the design
of home automation scenarios that consider energy, but focus
on making life easier, secure, and more fun.
The goal isn't to move utilities into our living room—rather
it's to allow consumers to take advantage of some of the same
technologies utilities are finding useful in smart metering and
monitoring/managing the distribution grid. Home automation
systems need to be designed to provide features that inspire
consumers to invest in home automation. Consumers should
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only need to spend a little time to tweak their smart home to
meet the needs of their household and then move onto to
other things.
Maybe we'll never get to “Set and Forget,” but we'll move
toward “Set Up and Tweak Occasionally.”
References
[1] A. Faruqui, L. Wood, Quantifying the Benefits of Dynamic
Pricing in the Mass Market,
http://www.edisonfoundation.net/iee/reports/
QuantifyingBenefitsDynamicPricing.pdf, January 2008
(accessed 08.09.11).
[2] Smart Meter Pilot Program, Inc., PowerCentsDC™
Program Final Report, September 2010.
[3] GE, Smart Appliances Empower Users to Save Money,
Reduce Need for Additional Energy Generation,
http://www.genewscenter.com/content/
Detail.asp?ReleaseID=6845&NewsAreaID=2 (accessed
21.05.09).
[4] Goldman, C.; Reid, M.; Levy, R.; Silverstein, A.,
Coordination of Energy Efficiency and Demand
Response, Environmental Energy Technologies Division,
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
(2010).
[5] Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative, 2011 State of the
Consumer Report, http://smartgridcc.org/wp-content/
uploads/2011/02/
SGCC+State+of+Consumer+Report.pdf, 2011,
http://smartgridcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/
SGCC+State+of+Consumer+Report.pdf (accessed
31.01.11).
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[6] C. Lombardi, These smart light bulbs heed iOS, Android
devices, CNET News, http://news.cnet.com/
8301-11128_3-20063928-54.html#ixzz1N73L3Zuu
(accessed 08.05.11).
[7] J. Yarrow, K. Angelova, Chart of the Day: Here's The
Most Popular Apps On Android, iPhone, and
BlackBerry, Business Insider, SAI,
http://www.businessinsider.com/
chart-of-the-day-apps-on-mobile-os-2010-6?utm_source
(accessed 10.06.10).
[8] Apple, All Categories: Most Popular,
http://www.apple.com/webapps/index_top.html
(accessed 24.03.11).
[9] Consumer Appliance Timeline, Trail End State Historic
Site, http://www.trailend.org/ind-timeline.htm (accessed
23.03.11).
[10] Trends in Online Shopping, a global Nielsen Consumer
Report, http://id.nielsen.com/news/documents/
GlobalOnlineShoppingReportFeb08.pdf, February 2008
(accessed 08.09.11).
[11] K. Fehrenbacher, Fail: The High-End Home Energy
Device Is Toast, http://gigaom.com/cleantech/
fail-the-high-end-home-energy-device-is-toast/ (accessed
01.02.11).
[12] D. King, Tablets and Smart Phones Slow Laptops Sales
Growth, DailyFinance, http://www.dailyfinance.com/
story/media/
tablets-and-smartphones-slow-laptop-sales-growth/
19867508/ (accessed 03.03.11).
[13] Grid Friendly™ Appliance Controller Licensed for
Market Development, Metering.com,
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http://www.metering.com/Grid/Friendly/appliance/
controller/licensed/market/development (accessed
23.03.11).
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Chapter 16. The Customer Side of the Meter
Bruce Hamilton, Chris Thomas, Se Jin Park and
Jeong-Gon Choi
Chapter Outline
Introduction 397
The Current Landscape for Demand Response 399
Including the Customer 399
New Technologies and Ongoing Pilots 400
Direct Feedback Technologies 401
Prices-to-Devices Technologies 407
Existing Models for Customer Participation 413
Future Developments: Integrating Technologies with
Customer Participation Models 414
The Illinois Smart Buildings Initiative: Creating
Dynamic Efficiency 415
Can We Relate the Model for Big Customers to Small
Customers? 417
Conclusions 418
References 418
Utilities are in the process of installing smarter and more capable meters in homes around the globe
These new meters can improve system reliability, while offering the promise of delivering cost and
energy savings to consumers However, the full benefits can only be realized by going beyond the
meter and affecting the way energy is consumed within the home New technical innovations on the
customer side of the meter, including programs that send prices to devices, are developing to help
enhance customer participation The authors examine a range of programs and devices that can help
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meet varying customer preferences and needs Unlocking the potential of these new technologies might
be a huge challenge, but, one thing is clear: to truly get the most out of utility smart meter investments,
we have to go beyond the meter
Demand-side management, customer behavior, appliances
Introduction
Among the key questions in the context of smart grid is: what
are the potential achievable benefits of advanced technology
to the utility, to customers, and to society as a whole? And
more importantly, how can we achieve them?
Smart meter deployments and ongoing pilot projects are
revealing just how much transformation is needed in the
industry, on both the utility and customer side. The early
evidence is that the traditional utility business model alone
isn't going to be sufficient to maximize the full potential of
smart meter investments. Operationally, achieving the
benefits requires dramatic changes in how utilities collect,
store, and process information. Functionally this means that
utility business rules and practices have to evolve as they
become more integrated. While this is certainly a significant
challenge to utility management, it's a relatively small
problem when compared with the challenges on the customer
side of the meter. Customer engagement has traditionally not
been the domain of utilities, and it entails a series of
challenges that are completely new to the industry.
As explained in Chapter 2, since the early days of
electrification, customers have been passive ratepayers
because meters only collect usage information for the utility,
and do not communicate to the customer the real-time cost of
their consumption.
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Traditional metering only allowed the
utility to bill for monthly consumption, using rates that reflect
the average cost of electricity. Furthermore, utilities were
given regulatory incentives to grow their networks, which
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