Author Archives: Jamie Fine

Cream Cheese And Time-Of-Use Electricity Pricing

By | Bio | Published: May 7, 2013

This commentary was originally posted on EDF's California Dream 2.0 blog.

“The cream cheese just fell off the roof of the car,” my 7-year old daughter said as I turned into my driveway after a trip to the grocery store. Right now you might be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with time-of-use pricing?” Allow me to explain.

We live in Alameda, CA, where plastic bags are prohibited and stores must charge for a paper bag. Alas, I had forgotten to bring a reusable one. To teach my children a lesson and avoid the public scorn (not so much the $0.05 per bag), I carried our groceries and asked the kids to lend their hands. And yes, I put the cream cheese on the roof of the car to free a hand to unlock it.

Once home, I realized that, in addition to almost losing my cream cheese, I’d been making potentially risky tradeoffs. After all, exiting the supermarket with full hands prevented me from holding my children’s hands while crossing a busy – and dangerous – parking lot.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not lamenting the ban on plastic shopping bags. I think it makes perfect sense, but it takes time to start making the adjustment and the risk tradeoffs aren’t always obvious.

This scenario– making adjustments that may seem inconvenient and a bit scary, but are well worth the effort– plays out in other areas of life as well. Particularly in rethinking how Americans use and pay for electricity.

Source: Union Atlantic Electricity

Most of us don’t think about how the time of day affects the cost of serving us power. In California, we aim to change that by moving to Time-of-Use (TOU) pricing – which will make electricity more expensive during times of peak, or high, energy demand and cheaper off-peak. In fact, just yesterday, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) recommended moving all residential customers to time-of-use rates by 2018 in an effort to give customers more control over energy costs.

EDF believes that TOU pricing will be best for people and the environment, just as banning plastic shopping bags effectively reduces their environmental impact. This approach can encourage conservation and reduce peak energy use while providing customers with more choices that can ultimately lower their monthly bills. Switching to TOU electricity pricing may feel to some like being thrust into a busy parking lot with an armload of groceries and two children to monitor. When should I use my dishwasher? Do I need to reset my air conditioner? Well, yes and no. You can choose to do nothing, or you can exercise a choice you don’t have with our current pricing structure: shifting energy use to times of lower electricity prices. It’s quite doable.

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Nest Labs: Proof Life Exists In The Smart Grid Ecosystem

By | Bio | Published: April 23, 2013

This commentary was originally posted on EDF's California Dream 2.0 blog.

There are many conceptions of the smart grid; what it is and what it should do for us – the “ratepayers” – who will finance the necessary upgrades to California’s electrical system. I find the concept of a “smart grid ecosystem” — with smart customers, smart utilities and smart markets — to be a helpful guidepost as we seek to evaluate what should be accomplished by the utilities trusted to deploy our smart grid.

Ecosystems achieve resiliency through diversity. We want a variety of clean energy resources on the supply side – hydropower, wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal – spread across a variety of locations (but never too far from customers). Similarly, on the demand – or customer – side, Californians, buildings, appliances and electric vehicles create an intricate, synergetic web that can be made more efficient and flexible with customer education and empowerment, customer-focused energy pricing policies, and demand response (which allows customers to voluntarily reduce peak electricity use and receive a payment for doing so in response to a signal from their electric utilities).

There are other ways to contemplate diversity in the energy context: Unlike some other states, most Californians can’t choose their power providers, though they can choose among rate “plans” (which are payment schemes, not plans to help manage energy use and costs). EDF recognizes that a smart energy marketplace will thrive with a greater variety of competitors, products and services, and would like to see “3rd party energy service providers” able to participate (that catch-all term includes organizations that deliver energy services and products to customers at a variety of levels throughout the smart grid ecosystem).

Yesterday’s announcement by Nest Labs (Nest) is more proof that the smart grid ecosystem is alive and well. With utility partnerships in California and Texas, among other places, Nest uses their intelligent, WiFi-connected thermostat to help customers smartly and painlessly trim energy use by learning, and mimicking, their temperature preferences automatically. For example, the Nest’s Seasonal Savings services will alert your thermostat when new rates apply with a change of season and the device will begin slight adjustments to presets to adapt to predictable weather trends. Read More »

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Solar, Wind Prompting Electricity Grid Innovation In California

By | Bio | Published: March 4, 2013

In a February Wall Street Journal article (“California Girds for Electricity Woes”), reporter Rebecca Smith gives an alarmist and misleading account of California energy regulators’ efforts to secure a cleaner, less expensive, more reliable electricity grid.  Right now, California has plenty of power:  44 percent more generating capacity than it typically uses, including a considerable fossil fuel energy portfolio.  Renewables – large scale, rooftop solar, wind, and, increasingly, energy storage – make up almost 15 percent of the grid, a percentage that will more than double in the next decade.  These clean, innovative energy technologies are working to improve the system by reducing the need for fossil fuels.

The reality is that the grid is changing, driven by California’s quest to secure an environmentally safe and affordable electricity system. Increasing the amount of renewable energy on the grid will mean that more generation is variable; electricity output from solar and wind depends on sunshine or windiness, respectively.    Up to this point, California has met this challenge by backing up clean resources with fossil fuels.  But California’s ratepayers can’t afford to keep doing this, so instead of “girding for woe,” the CAISO and the CPUC met to proactively address our changing future – to move California towards cleaner, less expensive electric grid planning.

This new approach can increase California’s ability to rely on clean energy generation by building greater flexibility into the system – while giving more options to consumers.  Not only can customer-based (“demand-side”) clean energy technologies reduce reliance on polluting power plants, they are quite likely to be more reliable and are potentially more cost-effective.   Demand response, or the ability of customers to choose to save money by responding to a price or electronic signal from the grid operator in times of excess system demand, will be key to integrating large amounts of intermittent solar and wind without back-up fossil or storage.   In fact, during afternoon peak demand, where supply is extremely limited in its ability to serve load, the addition of virtual generation resulting from the participation of DR into the market will actually lower energy prices.

California has already installed a robust digital metering infrastructure – and it’s time to put these meters to work by enabling customers to participate in demand response and other demand-side programs.  Coupled with technologies that now allow for fast, reliable, automated ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ adjustments to electricity use, we can seamlessly integrate variable electricity resources, such as wind and solar, without disrupting energy users.  Customers can choose to become an energy resource instead of fossil fuel plants.  Read More »

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Standing Or Elbow Room In The Energy Sector?

By | Bio | Published: October 16, 2012

GridWeek 2012 convened earlier this month in Washington D.C., and as a first time attendee, I left breathless and hopeful – yet confused – by inexplicable lingering complacency.  Unbeknownst to me, by agreeing to be a panelist in two sessions, I was setting up a comparative experiment. For the first panel, I spoke on “New Utility Business Models” to a packed room of the glimmer-eyed new energy intelligentsia, which is what makes GridWeek so exciting. In the later days of the conference, about a dozen GridWeek participants interspersed amongst a room of mostly empty seats to hear my panel presentation on “Smart Grid’s Role in New Air Quality Standards.”      

It would seem that I, and the handful of attendees at the air quality panel, see the productive overlaps between air quality standards compliance, smart grid and new utility revenues.   There are several ways that smart grid provides a value proposition for utilities faced with increasingly stringent air quality regulations, most recently the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule. Here’s a short, but by no means comprehensive, list of both synergies and potential tensions:

  • Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS): Smart grid supports achieving higher and higher proportions of intermittent, non-dispatchable renewable electricity generation.   Achieving high levels of RPS will be expensive unless we can use new strategies to manage intermittency and power quality.  New pricing structures for utility services can provide incentives to invest on both sides of the meter, and open the door for historically hidden utility services (such as voltage regulation) to be priced and sold.  For incumbent utilities, there is an opportunity to identify and price network services that traditionally have been bundled into rates.
  • Electric Vehicles (EV):  EVs are an important new frontier for utilities, and like most frontiers, offer both promise and peril.  Overloaded distribution networks might keep the utility engineers up at night, while the emerging new customer class has utility shareholders thinking like venture capitalists.  Though still small in number, EVs are quickly driving utility planners and system operators toward a fork in the road. Do we provide safe reliable service to new and existing customers using expensive dirty methods of the past (i.e., more big power plants) or do we take a deep breath (of cleaner air) and trust in the power of the people by embracing distributed energy resources?  
  • Distributed Energy Resources (DER):  Rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and demand response, collectively known as distributed energy resources, unquestionably can provide the low cost, clean pathway towards both energy independence and a sustainable economy.  However, DER is harder to plan and dispatch, and it threatens the traditional utility business models of incumbent institutions.   In California, net energy metering policy has been an important ignition switch, fueled by the California Solar Roofs Initiative, but these successful policies need to evolve to achieve DER at larger scales.   Again, the key is precisely pricing the goods and services on both sides of the meter.  Utilities should be paid for power quality and storage services provided to owners of rooftop systems, while electricity from those rooftops should be priced fairly to provide incentive to invest.
  • Clean air standards:  Oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter, acidifying compounds and carcinogens, such as mercury, are the power sector’s long-time emissions concerns.  Across the nation, electricity generators must hold permits to pollute and tradable emissions allowances that must be acquired at nontrivial prices.   Starting in 2013, California electricity generation that emits global warming pollution will have an associated cost –carbon allowances in the state’s cap-and-trade program.  Already, polluters in Southern California must acquire emissions allowances for the RECLAIM program, and power plants nationwide must comply with the acid rain emissions allowance program established in the Federal Clean Air Act .  Similarly, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) program puts a price on carbon emissions for nine northeastern states, and the Western Climate Initiative is endeavoring to do the same for West Coast states and Canadian provinces.  These programs use emissions allowances that are fungible and tradable, yet they represent real costs – and thus economic opportunity when avoided.  Pollution pricing is changing business models throughout North America.    But there is more to come.  For example, improved environmental performance enabled by smart grid technologies, such as increasing DER, presents new avenues to meet air quality requirements.  For the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other oversight agencies, the ability to measure, verify and enforce DER is key to granting compliance credit, and such capabilities are increasingly cost-effective with smart grid deployment. 
  • Consumer empowerment:  The mobile phone revolution is a prelude to what may be possible once consumers and producers begin to see true pricing in the energy marketplace.  While load-serving entities can find new revenues through services, consumers and entrepreneurs will be motivated by new ways to make a buck, or avoid spending bucks through unnecessary energy waste. 

The new smart grid business frontier has, in fact, many frontiers.  The California Public Utilities Commission conceived of an electricity ecosystem comprised of smart consumers, smart markets and smart utilities.  Utilities are trying to find their new niche within the ever changing food web, and all ears are perked for new opportunities.  That’s why only standing room was available in the business model panel session at Gridweek.

Meanwhile, in the air quality session of GridWeek, there was plenty of elbow room.EPA is considering flexible strategies for meeting new emissions standards for carcinogens.  Many utilities are operating in permit constrained areas that fail to meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards.  Enlightened utilities are seeing demand-side strategies as increasingly viable with smart meter deployment, and a means to improve returns to shareholders.  Performance-based rate of return can be structured to both reduce sales of energy to customer and to improve utility earnings. 

Gridweek revealed to me that many are educating themselves about new business opportunities, but precious few have the connected the dots to air quality improvements.   If I could, I’d bet on the folks who attended both sessions.

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Smart Grid, Washington, DC | Tagged | Comments closed

San Diego's New "Smart Energy Community"

By | Bio | Published: September 28, 2012

This commentary was originally posted on the EDF California Dream 2.0 Blog.

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (SDG&E) and Sudberry Properties have announced plans to incorporate breakthrough smart grid technology in the construction of Civita, the new master-planned development in Mission Valley, California. With a focus on sustainability and energy-efficiency, the “smart energy community“ will be home to vehicle charging stations, solar and fuel cell electricity, battery storage and energy management tools for residents.

"The Civita project is consistent with what we are trying to achieve here in San Diego," said Mayor Jerry Sanders. "By integrating solar power, clean transportation and energy efficiency into the very foundations of our homes and businesses, we can help preserve the environment while strengthening our community overall."

With plans to build nearly 5,000 homes and around a million square feet of office properties, apartment living, public parks, and a civic center over a once 230 acre gravel quarry, Civita could become one of the first communities in the nation to be “fully upgraded with smart grid technology and stand at the forefront of the broader transformation of the electric grid the community.” Civita aims to surpass current California energy efficiency standards by at least 15 percent by using energy star appliances, highly efficient residential lighting and onsite power sources, and by allowing some buildings and areas within community to operate independently of the grid.

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A Dynamic Approach To California Energy Use

By | Bio | Published: July 5, 2012

This commentary was originally posted on the EDF California Dream 2.0 Blog.

Californians are poised for a more functional, data-driven model for setting the prices people pay for electricity.  The new model will make the massive differences in costs of providing electricity during the course of a typical day more evident to us as energy users, thereby inspiring more efficient use of electricity resources.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) started a rulemaking to examine if the current rate structure for residential energy users is fair and equitable across customer classes and if it:

  • supports statewide-energy goals;
  • facilitating technologies that enable customers to better manage their usage and bills;
  • enables conservation and efficiency on the customer side of the meter; and
  • increases the reliance on non-fossil based generation to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions.

We know already that the short answer is “no”, so CPUC is eyeing a transition to time variant (“dynamic”) rates.  According to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), with time variant, or what is often referred to as “time-of-use”, pricing – rates “will be higher during summer weekday afternoons when electric demand is higher, typically noon to 6 p.m., May through October. In return you’ll pay lower rates at all other times. This means that when you use energy is just as important as how much you use.” 

EDF’s Energy team has been, and will continue to be, closely involved in the CPUC’s rulemaking, which will examine several facets of the current system.  EDF has also been involved in the related smart grid proceedings, such as the deployment of smart grid infrastructure – which provides the ability to both measure energy use in real time and inform customers about the costs (and environmental impacts) of their choices to use electricity at different times of the day.  This Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) enables a smoother transition to dynamic rates for residential consumers.

EDF is very encouraged that the CPUC is considering  time variant pricing because it will help consumers to be more thoughtful about their energy usage, particularly at times when demand is peaking and pushing electricity supply sources to their limits.  This type of rate structure can encourage conservation and reduce peak demand while providing customers with more choices that can ultimately lower their monthly bills.  For example, allowing consumers to see how much they can save on their electric bills by reducing their energy use during peak hours will encourage a shift of energy-intensive activities, such as washing and drying clothing and dishes, to off-peak (and less expensive) times of the day. 

Because a dynamic pricing system will alleviate pressure on the electric grid during peak demand, it will also lead to a more stable, less expensive energy system that is increasingly resilient to extreme weather events.  The economic motivation should also help to create an easy way for consumers to make decisions more efficiently, thereby lowering their electric bills and shrinking their environmental footprints.   

Futhermore, dynamic pricing can help integrate renewables and electric vehicles into the electric grid by allowing utilities to respond to price signals more effectively.  For example, time-of-use rates support electric vehicle charging at times when grid resources aren’t strained, such as late at night or early in the morning when most people are sleeping. 

This new approach will facilitate conservation and energy efficiency, as well as an increase in the use of clean energy sources that avoid harmful greenhouse gas and urban air pollution.   If adopted, the dynamic pricing model can be a common sense approach to saving energy and money, while promoting energy efficiency and a smarter, “greener,” electric grid country-wide.

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“Good Jobs, Green Jobs” Explores Novel Financing For Energy Efficiency Upgrades

By | Bio | Published: March 8, 2012

This commentary was originally posted on the EDF California Dream 2.0 Blog.

Increasing energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy are two ideal ways to cut climate pollution. Yet financing for these types of projects is often limited.

California has proposed using on-bill repayment (OBR) to help close a financing gap for EE that some have estimated to exceed $10 billion annually. It would be the first statewide program of its kind in the country to use third-party financing to fund energy-related upgrades for any type of building.

The program allows private loans for building efficiency upgrades and renewable energy projects to be repaid through utility bills. Billions of dollars could be made available at attractive terms for a variety of buildings, including single-family homes where owners are upside down on their mortgages, small businesses, large commercial properties and multi-unit rental buildings.

At next week’s Good Jobs, Green Jobs Western Regional Conference in Los Angeles, a panel of experts will discuss how the program can make energy upgrades more affordable and create good, green jobs. This workshop will feature a description of OBR, provide a status update on regulatory developments, and consider program design tradeoffs.

The workshop, “On Bill Repayment Solves the Financing Puzzle,” will be hosted by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and moderated by our Chief California Economist, Jamie Fine. Brad Copithorne, EDF’s energy and policy specialist who designed the program will describe how it works and how energy users can take advantage of the program to save money on energy bills and hedge against higher energy prices.

Other panelists include: Gretchen Hardison, Environmental Affairs Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; John Rhow, Director, Barclays Capital; and Neil Alexander, Account Manager, Utility Solutions Group, TRANE. These experts will share their perspectives on the program, and how it can be designed to meet the unique needs of their constituencies.

EDF looks forward to hosting the panel and discussing ideal ways to shape the final program. We are expecting California’s Public Utilities Commission to soon decide whether to offer OBR to all utility customers as a way to reduce energy use, grow the economy and protect public health and our environment.

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Getting ‘Smart’ About Your Energy Use Just Got Easier

By | Bio | Published: January 20, 2012

This commentary was originally posted on the EDF California Dream 2.0 Blog.

Source: Green Button

On Wednesday, I attended a presentation of the Green Button at EMC2, hosted by Silicon Valley Leadership Group, OSIsoft and SolarCity, and moderated by Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Tech Officer and Advisor to the President.  

In essence, Green Button is literally a green button on utility customer interface websites that customers can click to instantly download their historical energy use data in a simple, standardized electronic format.  Customers can then upload the data into software applications, or give it to consultants that provide services such as identifying how to save money by using less energy. 

All of the big California utilities – SCE, SDG&E and PG&E – have embraced the concept and will offer the Green Button to their millions of customers. There is a hope that utilities across the country will also adopt it.

One presenter observed that Americans, on average, waste 20% of the energy that they purchase. This creates a huge opportunity to save money on energy and help to protect the environment by avoiding demand for energy generated by dirty sources, including coal-fired power plants.

Yesterday’s event revealed what can be accomplished when software innovators, government leaders and utilities focus on a common goal. Chopra is widely recognized as an IT innovator in government and he challenged the utility industry to develop access to consumer data in September 2011. Now Green Button is a fully operational, widely embraced standard that will provide a buffet of energy use data for hungry software application developers. 

Testimonials were provided by up-and-coming CEOs in the energy sector, including oPower, Tendril, Lucid Design Group and Simple Energy.  Each company demonstrated how Green Button will drive innovations in energy use software applications.  For example, Tendril announced that its platform, Tendril Connect, will “connect utilities and energy service providers, consumers and app developers to achieve smarter energy usage.”

One question I was left with was, “just how green is the Green Button?” Currently, only the color pallet is green; no pollution information (such as greenhouse gas emissions) is associated with the energy use data. 

While Dr. David Wollman, Deputy Director of Smart Grid & Cyber-Physical Systems, and Manager, Smart Grid Standards and Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), indicated that the Green Button standards do have accommodations for emissions information, there will need to be positive pressure to fully develop that piece of the button. 

And that’s where EDF and you can come in.  We need to encourage efforts to rigorously link emissions information with energy use, in both time and place.      

As part of EDF's smart grid work, we are working with utilities, regulatory agencies and third parties in California and across the country to ensure that innovators have access to an emerging and competitive utility market.  Access to standardized energy use data is an essential piece.  Why?  So they can provide consumers with new tools that help them better understand and manage their energy use, which can save money, cut pollution and help protect the planet.

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Smart Grid Jobs Booming In Bay Area

By | Bio | Published: October 31, 2011

Source: Silicon Valley Smart Grid Task Force

This commentary was originally posted on the California Dream 2.0 Blog.

There’s something happening here. What it is, is perfectly clear: the smart grid is creating jobs in Silicon Valley and across the San Francisco Bay Area, according to a report just released by the Silicon Valley Smart Grid Task Force, which EDF oversaw as an advisory council member.

A well-respected research firm, Collaborative Economics, asked local businesses about their jobs in the smart grid sector. The results are early since the smart grid is still mostly in the planning stage but indications suggest it’s a job-engine that California can rely on.

The report divides the industry into four sectors:

  1. power management and energy efficiency,
  2. energy storage,
  3. local clean energy (distributed generation such as rooftop solar, small wind turbines, plus equipment manufacturing and installation), and the
  4. delivery of electricity (transmission and distribution).

During the depths of the recession from 2008 to 2009 when national unemployment doubled from 5% to nearly 10%, smart grid employment in Silicon Valley actually grew.

Manufacturing jobs in the industry are shining brightly against the dark cloud of declining blue-collar employment in the state. Today, more than half of the 12,500 smart grid jobs in the Silicon Valley are in manufacturing.

Investment activity across the diverse smart grid sectors has been robust since 2005 and with strong venture capital (VC) investments. California accounted for 69 percent of total US VC investment in 2010 and total amounts increased 66 percent from 2009 to $2.8 billion.

Investor interest in smart grid is no surprise, since the potential benefits of smart grid are significant and potentially very lucrative:

  • cleaner air,
  • reliable electricity supply,
  • low-cost electric vehicle charging, and
  • energy independence by way of local clean energy.

At the press conference where the report was released, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed captured the importance of the smart grid when he said that many of the city’s Green Vision Goals for jobs, electric vehicles and renewable energy will only be reachable with a smart grid.

Another reason the Bay Area is creating smart grid jobs is that many of the companies at the heart of the region’s economy – information technology giants such as Oracle, Cisco, and Google, energy companies such as PG&E and Calpine, and technology leaders such as GE and Honeywell – are all at the smart grid frontier.

Consumers have rightly asked, ‘what can smart grid do for me?’ In addition to the many environmental benefits, smart grid means empowerment, both in the traditional electrical sense and now in terms of controlling one’s energy use and costs. Now we have another answer: your next job might be helping to build the smart grid.

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Malfunctioning Smart Meters Demonstrate Their Intelligence

By | Bio | Published: May 16, 2011

The digital “smart meter” replacement of antiquated analog meters in California has caused quite a stir.  These devices have been making headlines since installations began en masse in 2006 because of concerns about health risks related to the wireless technology they use to transmit data and coincidental bill increases.  While an independent contractor hired by the California Public Utilities Commission found that the initial bill increases were due to summertime rate hikes and unusually high summer temperatures, PG&E’s smart meters are in the news again for billing errors. 

This time there are faulty meters generating billing errors when hot weather makes them run faster than normal.  While some skeptics may feel that the meter malfunctions validate their concerns, in fact, it demonstrates a key smart meter benefit: for the first time ever, meters have the ability to alert utilities that they aren’t working properly. 

When Bad News is Good News

In this particular instance, PG&E remotely compared the meters’ clocks with real time. It identified roughly 1,600 out of 2 million meters made by Landis & Gyr that were malfunctioning.  Its other 2 million meters made by General Electric don’t appear to have the problem. 

This is transformative: PG&E can now monitor millions of meters in real time to comprehensively identify and ameliorate problems. 

This isn’t possible with old analog meters, which is one of the many reasons why they’re being replaced. Before smart meters, electricity users who suspected erroneous billing had little evidence to make their claims.  Now the utility can proactively identify and address problems. 

To Put Things in Perspective

While it is inconvenient when any technical device, including a smart meter, is malfunctioning, the rate of problems with analog meters is much higher.  Consider this comparison:

  • Roughly 1,600 out of 2 million meters were found to have internal clocks that run a bit fast in rare hot conditions.  That’s a meter failure rate of 0.08%, or less than one 10th of a percent.  This failure rate is believed to be within industry norms.
  • According to PG&E, analog meters have a failure rate in the range of 3%, which means they fail at rates about 40 times greater than suggested by these faulty smart meters.

PG&E estimates that the overcharge for failed smart meters is less than $40/year, about $3.33 per month.  Again, it is the intelligent meters that enabled PG&E to quantify and correct the problem.  All of the customers with faulty meters will be repaid in full and receive replacement meters.  They will also get $25 for being inconvenienced and receive a free home energy audit.   

Advantages of Smart Meters

Once smart meters have been fully deployed, utilities will be able to remotely and in real-time monitor all meters in their service territory, isolating malfunctions with precision and speed.  What does that mean for consumers?  More reliable service and quick resolution when problems arise. 

You might wonder why EDF, an environmental advocacy group, is commenting on this.  Smart meters are key to delivering the environmental and public health benefits of the smart grid. 

EDF will soon be releasing a smart grid evaluation framework targeted at the plans that PG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison owe the state by July 1, 2011.

We will then be publicly evaluating those plans for their ability to deliver benefits including: increased effectiveness and reduced costs of energy efficiency and other electricity conservation programs; integration of electric vehicles and intermittent renewable electricity generation resources, such as rooftop solar panels.

Stay tuned.

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