Manufacturers are designing smart thermostats and appliances that will adjust power use automatically in response to price signals from smart meters, an approach known as "prices to devices." General Electric is already marketing hot water heaters that can link to smart meters. Whirlpool plans to manufacture one million smart clothes dryers by 2011, and has pledged that by 2015 all of its electronically controlled appliances will be smart grid-compatible worldwide.
Although utilities are running smart grid pilot projects across the U.S., including cities in New York, Texas, Florida, Colorado, and California, recent polls show that only about 20 to 30 percent of Americans know what the smart grid is. But large majorities of those who have heard about it think that seeing data on their power usage will help them save energy. Bearing out those views, studies show that consumers who have real-time information about their energy use reduce their total consumption by about five percent on average.
"When customers get enough data about how their electricity use affects their bill, they get interested," said Ellen Vancko, a senior advisor with the Union of Concerned Scientists who has also worked in the electric power industry. "You can see it with other purchases - people will drive past three service stations to buy gas from one that charges a cent less per gallon, because they can see the prices. The more information customers get and the more ability they have to act on it, the more successful smart metering programs will be."
As electric vehicles start to penetrate the market, smart metering will also help utilities manage growing power requirements to charge cars at homes and workplaces. "A single vehicle charging at 220 volts can double a household's peak power usage, so it will be critical to make sure they don't all plug into the grid at 6 p.m.," said Case. "That will become part of home energy management packages, and we also will probably be able to interrupt charging if it's needed to make sure that the grid is operating reliably."
In January the Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory released a study estimating that developing a full-scale smart grid in the U.S. by 2030 could reduce annual carbon emissions from the electric power sector by some 442 million metric tons, about 12 percent, equivalent to the output from 66 average coal-fired power plants. The smart grid would reduce emissions in many ways, including linking in more renewable power sources and educating consumers about their own energy use. Partial deployment of a smart grid in some areas would yield proportionally smaller payoffs.
Some interest groups are less enthusiastic, especially advocates for low-income and elderly consumers, who worry that advanced metering will make it easier to cut off customers' electricity and that managing home energy use will be too difficult for their members. For example, the American Association of Retired Persons argues that ratepayers should be able to choose whether to shift to dynamic pricing, and that retirees, the ill and the disabled may not be able to move their energy use to off-peak periods.
"Unaffordable home energy poses a serious and increasing threat to the health and well-being of a growing number of older people in low- and moderate-income households. For many of these households, high and volatile home energy prices jeopardize the use of home heating and cooling and increase the prospect of exposure to temperatures that are too hot in summer and too cold in winter," said Dean Sagar, AARP's director of livable communities.
Smart grid advocates say that carefully designed pilot programs and extensive testing - backed by strong oversight from public utility commissions - can minimize negative impacts like these. Moreover, they argue, utilities have no choice: without a more sophisticated grid that can integrate low-carbon sources, the power industry will not be able to meet state renewable energy targets (which mandate a fivefold increase in renewable electricity use by 2030) or accommodate large numbers of electric vehicles. "The smart grid is coming, inevitably," said Fox-Penner. "The only question is how bumpy the transition will be."
Jennifer Weeks is a freelance reporter based near Boston, Mass. DailyClimate.org is a nonprofit news service that covers climate change.
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8 Comments
Add CommentCheap high capacity batteries will make the need for a smart grid much less, and mean that power prices will not fluctuate anything like as much as anticipated
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisin Australia, smart meters have recently become unpopular because the initial pricing to pay more during peak daytime hours has been found to unfairly cost the elderly or invalid stay-at-home much more, maybe doubling their bills rendering them unaffordable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe cost of the new smart meter conversion at about $1K a pop would buy enough mass produced nuclear power to supply the average households needs forever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience shows we may be less than ten years from a civilization ending Global warming/Peak Oil/ Ocean acidification crisis that only a mass conversion to nuclear power can save us from and we are wasting time and treasure on this?
Leaving the elderly and disabled to die in obscurity is a time-honoured practice in the rich world, but shhhh let's not think about that...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr about the total cost of ownership of nukes, or the cost of a nukatastrophe.
Anyway.. I'm surprised the article fails to mention the impact direct current high voltage transmission will have on electricity supply and flexibility. Perhaps the US will wake up to this 10 years after Europe, North Africa, China and India. Perhaps the US national debt will have been called in and there will be no Superpower US left to afford any waking up.
No skin off my nose - I'm in Europe - but a deskinned US will be ugly.
Has anyone heard of algae? You can grow a plant-like microorganism, feed it CO2 and water, expose it to sunlight, extract its fats/oils, send it to an oil refinery, and burn it just like fossil fuels. Carbon neutral, mass producible, and as green as it gets; I believe algae could wean human dependance on fossil fuels forever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSmart Grids is really an interesting concept. The concepts of advanced metering, time-of-day based pricing and keeping the subscriber informed of usage is definitely something that can be adopted by Telcos which are facing severe pressures due to flat-rate pricing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSciDocWannaBe : Algae biotechnologie is still a long way off. But today we can already pyrolyse algae to produce carbon neutral biofuels, biogas, hydrogen, biochar or biofertilisers. Algae can be harvested from the sargasso sea without needing farming techniques. And not only algae but any biomass can be used as feedstock, meaning no need to use edible crops. This technology is now in production and is economical for private investors. See www.eprida.com to see the results of a donation-funded research group which has developed biomass pyrolysis over the past ten years. So over ten years biomass pyrolysis will absorb vast quantities of CO2 from the air, mitigating climate change via a constellation of 5,000,000 retorts throughout the world producing biofuels locally from local sustainable biomass supplies maintaining biodiversity through intermittent partial harvesting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the discussions about this subject , I like to point
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisout that France has 80% of the electricity generated by Nuclear Energy.
The people of France do not glow in the dark or have 3 eyes etc, and few if any have any safety concerns.
They have a well prepared set up to handle leaks,emissions etc.
America seems to have an irrational fear of Nuclear Energy, while much of the world is building Nuclear Plants which will not kill thousands as in coal mining and associated emissions from coal buring power stations.