Sioshansi F.P. Smart Grid: Integrating Renewable, Distributed & Efficient Energy
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meant they had incentives to encourage their customers to use
more electricity. As noted in the introduction by Sioshansi,
the culture of electricity consumption that has developed
encourages customers to plug in without much thought about
the cost, until they get a bill at the end of the month. Even
then, for many people, the cost of electricity consumption is
relatively small compared to their income; so many bills just
get paid without a second thought.
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This problem applies in varying degree to virtually all utility customers,
but it applies more acutely to residential customers.
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This problem isn't limited to just the smallest residential customers;
commercial customers have similar limitations in the data they receive
about their consumption, even though their electricity bills are a large
part of their operating expenses.
Today, there is increasing pressure to find a new model, as
the culture of electricity consumption is slowly changing in
response to the rising price of natural resources, concerns
about energy security, and the environmental cost of
electricity generation. Utilities around the world are investing
heavily in smart meters with the expectation that consumers
will respond to price signals and modify their usage (e.g., by
shifting discretionary load to off-peak hours). But not all
consumers will be interested in or able to respond to variable
prices, as explored in Chapter 15. To truly bring about the full
benefits of these new meters, technology beyond the
electricity meter and in customers' homes will be necessary.
Sometimes called “prices-to-devices,” a new class of
emerging technologies promises to help customers respond to
prices and reduce their consumption easily and painlessly.
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The critical question for policy makers, entrepreneurs,
manufacturers, and others is how to transmit the price signal
beyond the smart meter into the customer's home in a way
that will get the response that economists dream of. In other
words, what technologies and model of customer engagement
will be the most effective?
There are several basic customer engagement models that can
begin to bring new technology into everyday usage. In the
short to medium term, large commercial and residential
buildings will likely see the biggest advances in technology as
the business models to deliver new technology emerge first
for these customers. However over the long term, many of
these same models are expected to be extended all the way
down to small residential customers as technology costs
decline and energy costs increase.
This chapter will examine the opportunities for change on the
customer side of the meter and the new markets that will be
created. We examine the current landscape for demand
response, completed and ongoing pilot projects and
deployments on the customer side of the meter, technological
advances, and customer engagement models that have the
potential to realize the promise of smart grid upgrades.
The Current Landscape for Demand Response
Today most of the focus on the customer side of the meter is
on demand response that is operated as capacity resources.
System planners see this demand response as primarily an
asset to help manage stress on the grid during peak times.
However, the emerging smart grid is enabling an entirely new
class of demand response, including customer response to
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prices, more granular balancing opportunities, and overall
reductions in energy usage.
The staff of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) has completed the most comprehensive survey of
demand response potential in the United States.
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FERC staff
identified possible sources, and found that the largest driving
factor for the future of demand response in the United States
is the development of dynamic pricing and the coupling of
dynamic pricing with technology, because technology greatly
improves customer responsiveness.
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This is sometimes
referred to as sending “prices to devices.”
3
Available at http://www.google.com/
url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww ferc.gov
4
Faruqui, Ahmad and Sanem Sergici, “Household response to dynamic
pricing of electricity—a survey of the experimental evidence,” January
10, 2009.
Moving from a centrally controlled power system with
passive consumers to a decentralized system with engaged
consumers who respond to price signals involves a dramatic
change in the way the system is planned and operated. This
shift also raises a myriad of questions about how the industry
must adapt to enable these developments: Is such a shift even
technically possible? How will we get from here to there?
How are customers going to find this new technology? And
perhaps most importantly, what business models are going to
encourage its growth?
Before answering these questions one must examine the
current state of customer engagement.
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Including the Customer
Policy makers and utilities have been aware of the
opportunities that the smart grid can create for customers, and
have been discussing these ideas for some time. However,
until recently, customers were not a part of this conversation.
As a result, there has been considerable backlash over some
early meter installations.
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While many in the industry are
ready to move past these early problems, we believe they
offer a critical lesson. Customers have to be included in the
modernization of the system, and the change in technology
creates an opportunity to begin engaging customers.
However, as discussed in Chapter 15 the idea of getting
consumers to become active participants in the market is still
novel to many, and is a completely new idea to the average
consumer who has been successfully trained to be a passive
consumer.
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Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), a utility in northern California, and
Oncor, a Texas utility, both ran into opposition when customers began
reporting bills that seemed considerably higher than usual. While both
cases were later found to be caused by a confluence of events, the
industry and its regulators have begun to learn a valuable lesson:
customer engagement is an important and necessary part of making the
grid smarter. See http://www.bakersfield.com/news/business/economy/
x1305354119/Bakersfields-SmartMeter-trouble-worries-industry.
A recent example helps illustrate the point. Commonwealth
Edison Company has recently completed a pilot project in
Northern Illinois testing in-home devices that allow
customers to monitor their energy usage. In the early days of
the pilot, only a handful of customers responded to prices, and
only a small handful of customers even bothered to enable
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their new devices.
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This shouldn't be surprising to many.
Consumer Focus, the statutory consumer advocate in the UK,
found out in research released in March 2010 that only 26%
of people had even read their energy terms and conditions for
electric service.
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6
See http://www.intelligentutility.com/magazine/article/
communication-101?quicktabs_11=1.
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http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk/files/2009/06/
Consumer-Focus-response-to-Smart-Metering-Implementation-Programme-Consumer-P
This experience clearly demonstrates that we can't just expect
customers to pick up technology and find immediate value.
The importance of offering consumers effective
communication, education, and choices about prices cannot
be overstated. Customers have little knowledge of the cost of
electricity and even when they do, it's hard to relate cost to
usage, since customers are really only paying for heating,
cooling, refrigeration and hair-drying, not for kilowatt hours.
Customers are paying for electricity that does useful work in
their homes. Successful new technologies will be
technologies that help customer maintain the level of cooling,
heating, hair-drying, cooking, etc. that they desire, while
simultaneously helping them use less energy in the process.
New Technologies and Ongoing Pilots
Although the FERC Assessment of Demand Response
focuses heavily on the role that pricing can play in a more
responsive electrical system, it clearly notes that technology
can play an even bigger role. Utilities and other actors are
currently piloting many different pricing and technology
programs for customers. This chapter highlights some notable
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pilots and the resulting business models that can help to get
technology into customers' hands.
The ongoing and existing technologies and pilots can be
broadly classified into two categories:
• The first is technology that seeks to engage the customer
with direct feedback; and,
• The second group of technology allows the customer to
“set it and forget it,” as further discussed in Chapter 15 by
Harper-Slaboszewicz et al.
Direct Feedback Technologies
It turns out that the effect of direct feedback on energy
consumption is not a new idea. This issue has been researched
by utilities and scientists for more than 30 years. These
studies have consistently shown that feedback stimulates
changes in behavior, which produce significant energy
savings, as illustrated by researchers such as [1]. Table 16.1
summarizes the results of 38 feedback studies that took place
over a period of 25 years, and found 21 studies that consider
energy savings associated with direct feedback. Among the
direct feedback studies included in the report, over half
resulted in energy savings of between 10 and 20%. Other
papers have found similar conclusions [2].
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Table 16.1
Feedback Study Results
Savings
Direct Feedback
Studies (n = 21)
Indirect Feedback
Studies (n = 13)
Studies
1987–2000 (n
= 21)
Studies
1975–2000 (n
= 38)
20% 3 3 3
20% of
peak
1 1
15–19% 1 1 1 3
10–14% 7 6 5 13
5–9% 8 6 9
0–4% 2 3 4 6
unknown 3 1 3
Source:Making it Obvious: Designing Feedback into Energy Consumption, Sarah
Darby [1].
These findings are intuitive to anyone who's a student of
human behavior. Direct feedback is a motivating factor at the
gas pump, the grocery store, and elsewhere in the economy,
but electricity customers don't receive any significant
feedback today, other than an aggregate bill at the end of the
month. Thus, electricity consumers don't have the opportunity
to respond to changes in electricity prices the way they might
to gasoline prices or the price of bread and milk. This lack of
feedback is so dramatic and persistent that many in the
industry are skeptical that residential customers will take
direct actions even in the face of significant feedback.
The pilot projects that exist today are investigating two main
types of direct feedback mechanisms, briefly highlighted
below:
• In-home energy display devices; and,
• Web-based energy usage monitoring.
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In-Home Energy Display Devices
The underlying premise identified in the research in this area
is that most people have no idea how and when their homes
use energy. Their only information about energy use is a
monthly bill, which provides only one lump sum of kilowatt
hour usage and comes after the fact. This makes it almost
completely impossible to correlate quantity and usage
patterns. Addressing this fundamental problem has led to the
development of a variety of in-home energy display devices
that can help customers understand how and when they use
energy, so that they have the opportunity to make intelligent
choices about their usage.
The first-generation devices to monitor energy use in the
home were fairly primitive and oriented more towards the
technologically savvy consumers. The Energy Detective
(TED), for example, is a device that can be plugged into the
wall with appliances plugged into it. It then provides some
real-time monitoring of those specific devices' energy use.
Other devices such as the Blue Line Power Cost Monitor
connect to an existing meter and monitor the whole house's
energy use, rather than just that of a specific plug load. As
shown in Figure 16.1, pilot projects studying these types of
devices have shown fairly encouraging results.
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Figure 16.1
Conservation impacts by pilot.
Source: [2]
Today literally dozens of in-home devices are available, but
their capabilities vary quite substantially. Current in-home
energy monitoring devices can be as sophisticated as a full
home automation system with sophisticated energy use
analysis, or as simple as an energy meter compiling a home's
electricity usage over a given day. Two examples of devices
currently used are those offered by Control4 and Black &
Decker.
Control4 has introduced the EMS100 “home area network”
automation system (www.control4.com/energy/products/).
The EMS100 is a sophisticated wireless, in-home display
(IHD) connected to a wireless thermostat and other appliances
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in the home. The EMS100 also has control functionality that
allows the customer to monitor energy usage and control
appliances and other devices. Effectively, the EMS100
combines the functionality of many different devices into one
central system. This combined functionality creates
comprehensive load management capability that can be used
in many different ways.
Figure 16.2.
Control 4 EMS100 Schematic.
At the other end of the spectrum is Black & Decker's
EM100B Power Monitor. The EM100B is a relatively simple
device, consisting of an in-home display device and an optical
sensor that reads the meter. Accordingly, the EM100B is
quite a bit cheaper than the Control4 device, and has far less
functionality. However, the device is still capable of
displaying electricity use, minute by minute, in dollars or kW.
It appears that the EM100B's biggest advantage is that it is
relatively easy to install, requiring no wiring and working
with almost all electricity meters. Customers can buy the
device and install it themselves. The EM100B provides
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