The SMH has a report on the latest plans by the Australian energy market regualtor to make power prices more market driven - Electricity market to be opened up to curb demand.

In a bid to drive down surging electricity prices, the national wholesale electricity market is to be opened up to large energy users for the first time. The move is part of a series of measures aimed at cutting power demand during peak periods of the day, such as late afternoon.

Central to the new proposals, households will be pushed to cut electricity consumption during these peak periods - typically first thing in the morning and during the late afternoon and evening - in a bid to slash the need to spend tens of billions of dollars on new equipment, outlays which are driving up power prices.

In NSW, for example, electricity prices have risen upwards of 60 per cent over the past three years, which has prompted a fall in power demand for the first time on record.

In a report issued this afternoon, the Australian Energy Markets Commission, which oversees the electricity and gas markets, has outlined detailed plans for an overhaul of the market.

The key measures include:

* allowing large power users direct access in the wholesale electricity market for the first time;
* changed electricity tariffs to encourage more energy usage in off-peak times of the day, such as the afternoon and late evening;
** open up the sale of household and small commercial electricity, such as from rooftop solar panels, to buyers other than electricity companies.

The SMH also notes that following cost blowouts and the usual conservative conspiracy theories gaining traction in Victoria, smart meters aren't mentioned by name in the new recommendations - Smart meters too toxic to touch.

It is perhaps the biggest single public policy failure in the energy sector of the past decade - mandated smart meters which are being introduced in Victoria.

With the cost of the roll-out now estimated at more than $2 billion - more than twice the initial estimated cost - it has added another lucrative profit source to the activities of the power distributors.

And the backlash has been so intense that the Australian Energy Markets Commission omitted any reference to "smart meters" in its 192-page report released yesterday. The report outlines a series of measures to overhaul the electricity market by boosting so-called demand-side participation - that is, measures to encourage lower demand at times of peak electricity prices.

The report is littered with the term "better metering" and even "interval metering" as a means of introducing "more innovative pricing options" to the electricity market, to cut the need for a new round of capital spending.

The issue of smart meters has become so toxic politically that the NSW government, for example, refuses to countenance a mandated roll-out, fearful of a tabloid newspaper-generated backlash, such as occurred in Victoria, even though the federal government is threatening penalties if it doesn't go down this path.

And as Victoria has found, there has been no advantage in being the "first mover" in introducing smart meters, since technology has moved on since it launched this program several years ago now, especially since many so-called smart meter functions are little more than a smartphone app these days - especially with the national broadband roll-out.

The New York Times has a look at the investment boom in "big data" companies, driven in part by the slow roll out of smart meters - For Start-Ups That Aim at Giants, Sorting the Data Cloud Is the Next Big Thing.

The idea of big data goes something like this: In a world of ever-increasing digital connectivity, ever larger mountains of data are produced by our cellphones, computers, digital cameras, RFID readers, smart meters and GPS devices. The huge quantity of data becomes unwieldy and difficult for companies and governments to manage and understand.

“My smartphone produces a huge amount of data, my car produces ridiculous amounts of really valuable data, my house is throwing off data, everything is making data,” said Erik Swan, 47, co-founder of Splunk, a San Francisco-based start-up whose software indexes vast quantities of machine-generated data into searchable links. Companies search those links, as one searches Google, to analyze customer behavior in real time. ...

Founded in 2004, before the term “big data” had worked its way into the vocabulary of Silicon Valley, Splunk now has some 3,200 customers in more than 75 countries, including more than half the Fortune 100 companies. ...

Founded in 2004, before the term “big data” had worked its way into the vocabulary of Silicon Valley, Splunk now has some 3,200 customers in more than 75 countries, including more than half the Fortune 100 companies. ...

The amount of data being generated globally increases by 40 percent a year, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, the consulting firm’s research arm. And while Splunk has a lead in selling software to analyze machine data, big data is big enough to create new opportunities for a multitude of start-ups, many of them using the open-source software Hadoop.

“Venture capital is absolutely foaming at the mouth over big data,” said Peter Goldmacher, an analyst and managing director at Cowen & Company. “The volume of data being created now is not 10 times bigger, it is like a thousand times bigger.”

The Age has a look at spiralling power prices in Victoria and the need for smart meters to provide detailed price data to consumers to help them keep costs under control - Power surge to price surge: prepare for an expensive education, says expert.

VICTORIANS need to urgently educate themselves about the looming surge in electricity prices this year, or face bills so high many will struggle to pay them, the chief of an energy price comparison service says.

Power use surged yesterday, after temperatures in Melbourne hit 39.6 degrees at 6pm. Today the temperature is forecast to hit 35 degrees, after an overnight low of 24.

The spike in electricity use followed power prices in Victoria jumping on New Year's Day, by an average 10 per cent.

Much of this increase was on the charge to consumers for simply being connected to the grid - meaning users will now pay more regardless of whether they cut their power use or not.

The new tax, combined with mandatory renewable energy targets and chronic under-investment by power companies in infrastructure, will cause prices to rise further across Australia. ''We are looking at the doubling of the cost of power in five years' time,'' Mr Freund said. ''At that point people will start getting into serious hardship.'' ...

Also likely to have an impact on future electricity price rises will be the introduction of smart meters to every home in Victoria, which will measure energy consumption every 30 minutes, rather than every three months.

The new meters will allow for time-of-use tariffs to be charged, allowing energy retailers to charge more for using electricity at times when everyone wants to use their power, and less at low-demand times.

Energy Minister Michael O'Brien has guaranteed this new way of charging will not happen until next year, and that those who wish to stay on fixed charges will be able to do so. But Victorian Greens MP Greg Barber warned that anyone who had considered the $2.3 billion smart meter rollout a ripoff so far needed to be aware of what was coming. "You can't put people on time-of-use pricing unless they've got instantaneous access to information about how much they'll be paying for the power they are using,'' he said.

Greentech Media has a report on the expansion of smart metering to water and gas - Move Over, Electricity: Gas and Water Meters Are Getting Smart.

For all of the chatter about smart meters, the conversation rarely wanders far from the realm of electricity. But action is starting to heat up in the smart gas meter market, and water isn’t far behind.

Last week, consulting group Capgemini announced it was chosen by Southern California Gas Company (owned by Sempra) to install more than six million smart meters in the next five years, the largest gas-only utility smart meter project in the U.S. SoCalGas’s project is part of a nearly three-fold increase in the penetration of smart gas meters worldwide estimated by Pike Research between 2010 and 2016.

“The gas grid is certainly a different animal,” said David DuCharme, vice president of Utility and Smart Energy Services at Capgemini. “The largest issue is safety and management.”

In Europe, there is already more activity in the gas market; the U.K. government has mandated dual gas and electric smart meters for every home and business by 2020. Italy will install smart meters for all of its commercial gas customers and most residents by 2016.

Yet in the U.S., gas metering has not received as much attention -- or as many federal dollars -- as electric smart metering. However, the challenge of managing gas smart grid data can be less complex than electric meter data management, according to DuCharme. As prices continue to drop for the smart meter market, this will benefit the gas market, as well.

Like their electric brethren, gas utilities have struggled with integrating IT and OT when implementing the new metering systems. Capgemini, which has doubled its accounts in the smart energy space to 40, is finding increasing success with gas utilities. In the case of SoCalGas, about 30 different vendors will provide the meters; Aclara is providing the MDM system.

Water is also on the horizon. “The cost of efficiently managing infrastructure in the gas and water industry is extremely important,” said DuCharme. For those who think the electric grid in the U.S. is aging, the water infrastructure in much of the world is downright elderly. One study from Frost & Sullivan estimates the European smart water meter market will be worth $20 billion by 2020 and will see double-digit growth in the next decade.

Smart meters continue to get bad press everywhere - partly from bad communication (no one seems to understand what benefits they could offer), partly from bad products (which don't do enough to be really useful) and partly from the absence of dynamic, realtime power pricing to make a decent implementation useful. The Age has an example of the lack of enthusiasm in the Australian market today - Smart meters given a fail.

VICTORIA'S experiment in rolling out so-called ''smart electricity meters'' is unlikely to be seen in New South Wales soon, with the head of one of the largest electricity distributors casting doubt on their merit. Last year in Victoria, the cost of the program blew out to $2 billion from initial estimates of $800 million.

''Is the business case in place? I'd have to say it's not,'' George Maltabarow, the managing director of Ausgrid, told a forum recently. ''Victoria is a very good example of that. ...

NSW has been slower to move, and the merging of information technology and electricity grids coupled with the large price declines of the necessary equipment means that there was no advantage in being the first to act.

Smart meters allow households to monitor their power consumption and reduce use during peak price periods, which can help reduce electricity networks investing in equipment otherwise used only a few hours a year. ...

In NSW, Ausgrid has more than 400,000 first-generation smart meters installed, with 250,000 customers on ''time-of-use'' contracts. Mr Maltabarow estimated that these households reduced their electricity bills by as much as $270 a year, on average, with time-of-use contracts, while the median saving is about $70 a year. Other NSW electricity distributors have been on the back foot in adopting the technology as well, due to the cost of rolling out the meters and limited benefit. ...

Under the federal government's ''smart cities smart grid'' program, Ausgrid is rolling out smart meters that have communication capabilities, which will enable it, with TruEnergy which bought the company's retailing operations earlier this year, to test differing pricing products combined with feedback technology, Mr Maltabarow said.

Stuff.co.nz has a report on NZ's slow progress rolling out smart meters - Network Tasman eyes $20m plan for smart meters.

Network Tasman is considering whether to invest up to $20 million to fit out homes in the Nelson region with so-called smart meters as part of a joint venture with other electricity lines companies.

Chairman Ian Kearney confirmed Network Tasman was undertaking a feasibility study into joining SmartCo, a consortium of 14 lines companies which wants to spend $200m around the country putting in electronic meters equipped with Home Area Network (HAN) radios capable of wirelessly controlling and communicating with smart home appliances. ...

Current meters were based on 80-year-old technology and did not permit easy electricity management or load control, whereas new generation meters were far more efficient and were able to provide extra services, Mr Kearney said.

However, to label them smart was overstating their usefulness, he said. "Potentially there are a number of things an electronic meter will make easier but at this point of time we don't see there is any significant demand for people who want to hook refrigerators or washing machines or dishwashers to them because most of these devices have a built-in timing system anyway."

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright criticised electricity retailers in a 2009 report for installing "dumb" smart meters that could relay half-hourly meter readings back to retailers, but which do not have home networking capabilities built in.

While the SmartCo initiative was "very encouraging" and would allow variable pricing, the fact electricity retailers had already started installing meters without HAN radios created "a mess", she said.

More than 614,000 "advanced meters" capable of sending half-hourly meter readings back to retailers have been installed on behalf of companies, including Genesis Energy and Mercury Energy.

The Geelong Advertiser reports that Victoria’s smart meter rollout is continuing - Geelong to get smart meters.

EVERY Geelong home will be fitted with a new electricity smart meter in the next year after Powercor yesterday revealed plans to start installations next month. Starting in Grovedale and Waurn Ponds, the company will install 110,000 of the controversial electricity readers at homes and businesses throughout the Geelong region.

Hundreds of workers will be involved in the Geelong roll-out, part of a four-year, statewide project to replace 2.5 million traditional electricity meters with the new smart meters.

Whereas data from older models is recorded every three months by a team of meter readers, smart meters record power consumption every 30 minutes and automatically send readings to the customers' power company.

In time, power companies plan to make that detailed information available to customers.

The ABC reports that utilities haven't been helping public perception of smart meter programs by overcharging for their installation - Power companies overstate cost of smart meters.

The Australian Energy Regulator that says Victoria's power companies have overstated the cost of rolling out smart meters by $500 million.

In a draft decision, the regulator says CitiPower, Jemena, Powercor, SP AusNet and United Energy Distribution have not made a good enough case for charging $1.24 billion for the three-year roll out.

Andrew Reeves, the chairman of the electricity and gas regulator, says the cost increase is not justified.
"On their numbers put in front of us, charges would typically go up from currently about $100 a year to about $160 a year," he told ABC Local Radio.

"Under our proposal the charges would still increase, but would only increase by about an additional $20 a year."

The regulator says the cost of the rollout should be $760 million.

Energy Minister Michael O'Brien says the State Government was always concerned that costs were not properly scrutinised by the former Labor government.
"We'll be making our own submissions to the regulator before they make a final decision.

Australian IT News has a look at a smart grid project within AusGrid, increasing the level of data available about the distribution network - Ausgrid zeroes in on network faults.

Energy utility AusGrid has deployed monitoring devices in 2300 street-level cabinets in an ongoing effort to gain a more granular visibility of its electricity distribution network.

The utility had previously announced it would roll out the PowerSense devices in 12,000 of its 30,000 street-level power distribution boxes, coupled with a back-end data analysis system supplied by IBM.

The IBM system was funded as part of the Federal Government’s $100 million ‘Smart Grids, Smart Cities’ program, in which Ausgrid - formerly EnergyAustralia - has been trialling smart grid hardware, meters and applications at select areas in Sydney, the Hunter Valley region and Newcastle.

Ausgrid managing director George Maltabarow told iTnews that the newly deployed sensors would measure voltage and current between Ausgrid’s high voltage (11,000V) major zone substations and its street-level distribution units, where the current is converted into the 240V current used in households.

He said the sensors indicated whether there was any service interruptions on that street and what loads the equipment were carrying.

“The system has already proved itself in emergency situations,” he said. “We have already had major failures and used the system to prioritise and optimise where in the network we put generators in to provide supply.”

Diagnostic data was transmitted over a 3G network to larger substations, and then to the utility's central IT systems for monitoring and analysis over a fibre network.

Maltabarow said Ausgrid’s SCADA system had previously only provided visibility into the high voltage segment of the network. “Without this technology, we don’t know what’s going on in the [lower-voltage] distribution network,” he said.

The project was designed to deliver second-by-second analysis of faults in the utility’s electricity grid, with the same level of information previously only available to the company on an annual basis. ...

Once AusGrid has better data on its distribution network, the power utility will use a custom 4G network using a mixture of WiMAX and LTE technologies over spectrum leased from vividwireless to connect street-level distribution units to smart meters installed in residential premises.

The meters would optimise transmission and address service outages right down to the level of the individual customer. It would also allow customers to monitor their own energy usage at a house level and with individual devices, allowing room for potential customer rebates to incentivise energy consumption.

Maltabarow said AusGrid has identified 144 sites for antennae builds for a 4G network to complement these meters, 60 of which are already under construction.

Earth2Tech has a report on Google’s abandonment of its PowerMeter experiment - 5 reasons Google PowerMeter didn’t take off.

Google officially shuttered its web energy tool PowerMeter Friday after the application failed to bring in enough users. For those who have watched PowerMeter’s slow slog over its two-year lifespan, the move to kill it isn’t all that shocking. But the application, which enabled people to monitor and manage their home energy consumption, does have an important legacy as one of the first examples of how the Internet and broadband will change the way people consume energy.

Here are some of the reasons why I think PowerMeter didn’t take off:

1. It’s early. The market for energy management tools is still in a really early stage. Consumers are largely unaware of the tools and technologies available to monitor and manage their own energy. The Consumer Electronics Association found that 64 percent of consumers are unaware of electricity management programs, and 66 percent of consumers aren’t familiar with the smart grid. Google launched its PowerMeter tool in early 2009, when very few smart meters and smart grid network deployments had been installed in the U.S.

2. Opt-in, not opt-out. In this early stage of the market, it seems like programs that are opt-out (sent unless the customer says they don’t want it), not opt-in (only sent if the customer wants it), are the ones working. OPower has been successful largely because it connected with utilities early on, and OPower’s detailed energy bills and energy savings recommendations, are delivered to utility customers automatically. A utility is one of a few types of companies that can send its customers this type of information without getting an opt-in agreement, and the mailed OPower energy bills have a very high open rate, because they look just like a utility energy bill. ...

3. Utility friend or foe? Since Google first launched PowerMeter, some utilities saw the tool as a threat to the relationship they have with their customers. … At the same time, when Google first launched PowerMeter, it focused on connecting with data from smart meters, then later opened its API and connected with gadget makers to circumvent smart meters. Smart meters were in a very early stage then (and relatively still are), and are the end devices for utilities (utilities are behind their installments). …

4. Direct to consumer. Perhaps Google would have been better served if it created PowerMeter to go directly to the consumer originally, but did it in its own algorithm-focused way. Earth Aid, for example, uses algorithms to take utility data straight from an online utility account if the consumer gives Earth Aid permission to link that account to its system, and Earth Aid doesn’t need utility partnerships. …

5. Google isn’t an energy company. Google didn’t ever really market PowerMeter, and PowerMeter came out of its philanthropic arm Google.org. It was an experiment, and one that didn’t work. Despite the amount of funding Google has been putting into clean power, Google isn’t an energy supplier or manager at heart. ...

The Daily Camera reports that US smart grid software company Tendril is celebrating signing a contract with Origin Energy to provide their applications to Australian customers - Joe Biden touts renewable energy, Boulder's Tendril at NREL speech.

In addition, Biden lauded Boulder-based Tendril, a company that specializes in smart-grid and home-energy technology, for its investments in helping Americans and citizens worldwide consume less energy.

Tendril on Friday announced it signed a contract with Origin Energy, an Australian firm that plans to deploy Tendril's application suite -- used by consumers to gauge, modify and learn about energy use -- to thousands of its customers in the second half of 2011.

Under the contract, Tendril's products potentially be deployed across Origin Energy's entire 4.5 million customer base, Ivo Steklac, Tendril's chief operating officer, said in an interview with the Camera on Friday afternoon.

The Climate Spectator notes the initial rollout will be limited to 5000 customers in Victoria that already have smart meters - Smartening up.

Origin Energy says it will conduct what it describes as Australia’s first large scale Smart Home pilot, with new technology to be tested in 5000 homes in the second half of 2011. The company has partnered with Colorado-based Tendril, which will supply in-home displays that will allow customers to monitor energy use via web, mobile, paper, and home area network devices and advanced application development for future programs such as solar, smart appliances and electric vehicles.

Origin says the Tendril device will provide customers with easy-to-use tools to engages in energy efficiency and accelerate participation in new programs, pricing and active home energy management, and can be adapted for smart meters, smart appliances and new technologies such as solar. The pilot is to be held in Victoria, where smart meters have already been installed.

“The pilot of the Tendril program is a very exciting development for Origin, the leading Australian energy retailer, as it signals the beginning of a very different relationship between customers and their energy retailer,” said Phil Craig, the general manager of Origin Retail. “Origin will have the potential to better engage with our customers and deliver a range of new, more targeted products and services to help customers better manage their energy consumption and power bills.

Origin says its own research suggests Australians are confused about the impact they can have on their bills and the environment, and more than half struggled to make the correlation between their behavioural changes and their impact on the environment.

Smart Grid News has a jaundiced look at the luddite backlash against smart meters - The fruits of smart meter phobia.

OK, so you don't want a wireless smart meter on the side of your house because you're sure, despite copious scientific evidence to the contrary, that its radio frequency emissions are going to kill you.

Well, after organizing and making your intentions clear, you have won. Congratulations! You can have it your way and keep the darn thing off your house. One small catch, though: you'll cost a lot more money to support so you'll have to pay extra.

We're working on modernizing the grid so it can support greatly increased amounts of intermittent wind and solar energy. We're trying to reduce our use of, and dependence on, fossil fuels, which will make our world a healthier place by far. Smart meters have an important role to play by giving utilities a better picture of near-real time energy demand, as well as the means to manage demand during periods of peak consumption.

So, about that cell phone you press against your head? And the computer screens you stare at all day. And the WiFi router that forms your home network. And the microwave that's running sometimes while you tidy up in the kitchen. You've tolerated, if not embraced, modernization of other sectors of the economy. Please be a bit more consistent with your fears and let us get on with our work.

Smart Grid News has a look at the evolving business model of smart grid technology provider Silver Spring Networks - The evolution of Silver Spring Networks.

No, I don't know why Silver Spring Networks (SSN) failed to go public last year as widely expected. And yes, I asked during my latest briefing. And no, Executive Vice President Eric Dresselhuys wouldn't answer my IPO questions.

But I do know that the delay could end up for the best. In that intervening year, SSN has matured its vision in a way that could increase its valuation. And it all comes down to one word: Platform.

The evolution of a vision

Take a look at SSN's self description circa 2005:

Silver Spring Networks connects utilities with their customers over a two-way, real-time network...

And how it described itself a year ago at the height of the IPO speculation:

Silver Spring Networks is a leading smart grid solution provider...

Now look at how it describes itself today:

Silver Spring Networks is a leading smart grid platform provider...

You can see the evolution visually as well. Look at the nearby drawing taken from SSN's Web site. In its early days, SSN thought of itself as a communications provider -- the blue layer at the bottom. Today, its vision embraces the blue layer plus the platform in the middle. It even reaches up into the green applications layer with the help of more than 40 companies now certified as SSN partners.

So what's the big deal about platforms?

Smart Grid News has been preaching about the value of platforms for years. I think they are essential to smart grid progress. (For a primer, review our survival guide to the smart grid platform by professor Geoffrey Parker, Director of the Tulane Energy Institute). Done right, platforms are good for the provider and good for customers too.

And they're really good if you want to go public. IPO underwriters and investors love the word "platform." To them it stands for high growth and high barriers to competition. Microsoft has a computing platform. Cisco has a network platform. Qualcomm has a cellular platform. Google has a search platform.

If I were going public, that's the kind of company I would want to keep. Smart grid platform has a very nice ring.

There's another aspect to SSN's evolution: It has moved away from an over-reliance on smart metering. Look back at SSN's platform drawing. It now shows five applications. Not just metering, but also distribution automation, demand response, smart home and electric vehicles. Of those five, metering is nearing a plateau but the other four are growing, especially DA and DR.

By expanding its vision, SSN has inserted itself into those growth paths. Most market researchers expect smart meter sales to plateau in 2012. But they expect both OT (operational technology including distribution automation) and IT (information technology) to surge, with each one climbing to tens of billions in annual sales worldwide. They have equally cheerful predictions for the demand response sector.

Earth2tech has a look at some of the reasons why there has been significant resistance to smart meter rollouts - Why the Smart Meter Backlash Story Isn’t Going Away.

This story seriously won’t go away. And here’s why:

1. People don’t like PG&E. PG&E has a long and contentious relationship with California residents. The utility previously backed the losing Prop 16, which would have basically stopped local governments from getting into the power business. There was that whole gas line fire disaster in San Bruno in September, and the utility took months to initially respond with an apology for the first smart meter complaints that emerged. PG&E couldn’t have done a worse job at outreach to date. Basically anything PG&E does at this point is going to be looked at with a skeptical eye. Bummer.

2. Hard times. As the sergeant put it to the New York Times, budgets are tight everywhere right now and anything that’s giving the impression of unfairly costing consumers money is going to face anger, and apparently, a lot of it. This might not happen to such a large extent if wallets weren’t so tight.

3. Technology is confusing: People generally don’t understand how smart meters work. If you have a Wi-Fi router in your home, a cell phone in your pocket, and a GPS device in your car, yet you’re worried about health concerns of your smart meter, then you don’t understand smart meter technology.

4. Digital, networked technology can be scary. As I’ve written at length, adding a network connection and software to a device has, throughout history, tended to make people nervous. Whether it’s a backlash to computerized voting, or online and mobile banking, the digitization of the power grid will face the same uncertainty.

5. It’s getting hot in here. NASA reported that January through September were the hottest on record. The hotter it is, the more air conditioning people use in their homes, and the more they spend on their monthly utility bills. So as the first wave of smart meters is being installed (partly to help fight climate change), the climate has delivered record hot temperatures that are likely boosting a lot of bills.

6. Little innovation, little change. The power industry has seen little innovation over the past century, which is why greentech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are so eager to build companies in this industry. As a result, utility consumers are used to a routine, never-changing relationship with the utility, and aren’t used to any type of change, period.

7. What do I get? Compare a smart meter installation to the installation of your new cable connection. Working with the cable company is really annoying; they seem to take forever; their customer service lines are abysmal; yet at the end of the irritating journey, you have an Internet connection that brings you all your favorite web content. After you get your smart meter, what do you get? Oh, the ability to cut down on your energy consumption. Not so fun.

The New York Times has an article on some examples of the backlash - ‘Smart’ Meters Draw Complaints of Inaccuracy.

Over the last year, as utilities around the country have installed an estimated two million of the new digital meters, power companies have received plenty of complaints — and in some states have been hit by class-action lawsuits — most of them from consumers saying the smart meters are overstating their electrical usage.

This is not the smooth rollout envisioned last year, when the Obama administration included money for utilities to install smart meters as part of a $3.4 billion injection of federal stimulus spending to modernize the nation’s power grid. By 2020, there could be as many as 65 million smart meters, by various makers, installed in this country, according to one estimate.

Using digital technology and computer networking, smart meters can transmit real-time data that is supposed to enable utilities to conserve electricity and better allocate power during parts of the day when overall demand is high. Utilities can also then vary the price for power, by time of day or time of year, based on when it is being used; some are already offering this option to customers.

Meanwhile, for customers with the right training and additional equipment, the meters can give households a much more detailed picture of the amount of electricity they are using, down to individual appliances. That, in theory, can help people reduce their electric bills and become greener citizens.

But because of faulty technology in some cases, and more often through general shortcomings in consumer education and customer-service support by many utilities, smart meters are leaving many customers dumbfounded.

In Maryland earlier this year, state regulators, aware of the discontent around the country, temporarily blocked a utility’s smart-meter proposal, citing inadequate planning and the potential cost to consumers.

In California, Michael Kelly, a lawyer handling a class-action suit against the state’s dominant utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, over billing disputes, said the problems probably had less to do with faulty devices and more to do with a hasty rollout. Old billing systems were merged with the new smart-meter technology, he said, too frequently resulting in erroneous charges.

“We’re just saying we want an evaluation done and that we want anyone who was overcharged to get their money back,” Mr. Kelly said.

A state-ordered analysis by the independent research firm Structure Consulting Group, released in September, agreed with the utility’s assertion that its new meters were accurate for the most part. The study also supported its conclusion that most of the complaints could be traced to a heat wave, changes in personal behavior or old meters that were actually malfunctioning and undercharging before the new ones were installed.

But the Structure report also said the utility had done a poor job of educating consumers and addressing their concerns. In basic terms, the smart digital meters are simply replacing the old analog meters, with their inscrutable dials and counters, found on the sides of homes all over America. But unlike those “dumb” devices, which are often read once a month by utility employees going house to house on foot, the digital meters can provide utilities with remote, real-time measurements of kilowatt-hours being used.

A recent analysis by the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute, a utility-financed research organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., estimated that creating an intelligent electricity grid of this sort in the United States could reduce electricity use by more than 4 percent annually by 2030. Nationally, that could mean annual savings of roughly $20.4 billion for utilities and their customers, according to the institute.

Grist has some commentary on the Earth2Tech and New York Times articles - Understanding the smart meter backlash.

David's been writing lately about the intersection of technology and human habits and culture, arguing that energy is a behavioral challenge as much as a technological one. There's a prime of example of how these things collide -- and why climate hawks should pay attention -- in the backlash against smart meters in California.

The New York Times is the latest to cover the trend of residents responding in outrage when utilities install smart meters -- home-energy computers that provide detailed information on what appliances you're using, and when. They're a necessary element in building a clean-energy grid that relies on wind and solar power, feeds electric cars, and supports greener dishwashers and other appliances (here's a good backgrounder).

California utility PG&E has been a national leader in rolling out the devices. It's also faced the strongest revolt. ...

Behavioral researcher Doug McKenzie-Mohr suggests there's no silver bullet to getting people to adopt new sustainable behaviors. It requires patience, careful communication, carefully designed pilot programs, and research into what mental associations new concepts may trigger (that's why we get home-energy "reviews" or "check-ups" instead of "audits").

Mailing out brochures isn't going to put everyone's concerns to rest, because their worries are less about information than about adjusting to change.

There's reason to think that privacy fears about the smart grid aren't going to be "solved" any quicker than the question of internet privacy will be resolved (the grid is often called the internet for energy). The question will persist, just as the question of internet privacy has.

Fehrenbacher's whole story at Earth2Tech, "Why the Smart Meter Backlash Story Isn't Going Away," runs through a list of ominous reasons why the dilemma will stick around. It's worth reading.

There are two ways to think about the PR challenge of smart meter going forward, one cheery and one gloomy. Global warming speech-givers are fond of saying that our choice is not between sustainability and the status quo; it's between sustainability and Detroit/Mogadishu/Pakistani floods (pick your social-collapse metaphor). In the same vein, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers says our choice is between a wired clean-energy network and utility rates that will rise 20 to 40 percent in the coming decades to replace aging power plants. The status quo isn't an option -- that's the gloomy conclusion.

For the other perspective, I'm cribbing from David's recent post comparing China's massive top-down energy planning and a decentralized American alternative:

Among other infantilizing features of modern American life is the fact that we are passive, thoughtless consumers of energy, forever suckling at a far-away teat, whether it's foreign oil producers or politically connected corporate behemoths. We send money out of our communities; someone sends power in. We are as dependent as sheep.

One step toward regaining our sense of civic engagement and self-determination would be to widely distribute the means of making and managing energy, to empower bottom-up rather than top-down innovation. Our communities can never truly govern themselves if they have no control over their own power. Let China have the Three Gorges Dam. Let's show the world, again, that democracy can work.

Smart meters can help Americans become not just consumers but energy managers and producers (through, say, rooftop solar panels). If you buy this perspective, adding info-tech to your home's energy system isn't disempowering at all. It's an expression of democracy. That's a bit more hopeful.

Smart Meters.com reports that the Victorian government doesn't have the courage to rollout smart meters for water, following resistance to their electricity smart metering program - Victoria Government Rules Out Water Smart Meters, Despite Test.

Victoria, Australia will not be introducing water smart meters for household use after receiving a voter backlash against smart electricity meters, even though it conducted a test program in the southeastern suburbs. "Our Government will not be rolling our smart water meters for households in Victoria," stated Water Minister Tim Holding.

The State Government was looking to expand the bungled smart electricity meter system to cover water use as well, even though there were concerns that the system is useful for retail companies but causes household bills to rise.

Before ruling out the meter deployment, the Government conducted a trial by offering South East Water’s residential customers a $50 Myer voucher to participate, according to the Herald Sun.

Before the scrapping of this plan, there were revelations that residential smart electricity consumers will have to pay up to $285 per year just for having the meter. Electricity distributors have permission to recover smart meter installation costs directly from residential consumers.

To counter the customer concerns about bills, the Government-hired consultants gave the cynical suggestion of having a monthly billing period instead of a quarterly.
According to the Marchment Hill Consulting report for the Government, implementation of the water smart meter system will help water companies to reduce costs but it may not be able to reduce water price.

The smart meter system will give more control to households regarding water use management, however, it may cause "bill shock," says the report.

The water bill that an average household pays annually is already expected to reach $1000 this year with recovery process starting for the $3.5 billion Wonthaggi Desalination Plant.

The Australian has a look at some of the FUD being generated about smart meters, with one criticism being that they hit poor people who are at home during the day harder than average - Smart power meters 'to hit poor'. Given that most power prices are regulated still this would be easy enough to address, either via the regulatory or tax systems (of course, you'd probably want market driven prices for power to make smart meters really useful, which points to the tax system for making this "fairer").

HOUSEHOLDS that rely on daytime airconditioning, cooking and heating will be hit with higher power bills. This will occur as hi-tech "smart meters" are rolled out nationally.

Victorians are being slugged an average of $68 a year just for the remote digital meters to be installed -- even though barely 10 per cent of households have them.

Consumers are being billed upfront for the rollout to 2.5 million households, which is not due for completion before the end of 2013.

Other states and territories are trialling the devices, which send real-time readings to power companies every half-hour.

Utilities can then tailor their bills, to charge more for electricity used at peak times of demand during the day, and less at nights and weekends.

Victoria has stalled the new pricing system for at least nine months, after complaints from welfare and consumer groups that it would punish low-income families and pensioners.

The introduction of the smart meters comes in the wake of Australians' electricity bills rising 18.2 per cent last financial year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, with a typical bill going up by as much as 27 per cent to $2012 in Victoria and 12 per cent to $2278 for rural NSW residents.

The Age has a look at some of the deficiencies with the Victorian smart meter rollout - Smart meters look dumb for users.

SMART meters, the new technology pushing up Victorian power bills, will provide little benefit to customers over the next five years, as the big electricity companies reap hundreds of millions of dollars from the rollout, a Sunday Age investigation has revealed.

Findings by the Australian Energy Regulator have undermined the state government's position on smart meters - which will be fitted to every Victorian home by the end of 2013 - and the most recent cost-benefit analysis shows the implementation will deliver $1.5 billion in cost savings to power companies over 20 years and few real benefits to customers.

This comes as Victorians face escalating bills driven by smart meters. Customers pay up front, regardless of whether they have a smart meter. This year the cost was $68, next year $72, and the Auditor-General warned that costs could climb higher.
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Power companies will recover the cost of installing and operating meters through bills until 2028. So far, 250,000 meters have been installed.

Smart meters replace the old ''spinning disk'', manually read meters measuring electricity use. The new meters have two-way remote communication with the power company, sending energy use data 48 times a day. They will be able to connect and disconnect homes with the touch of a button. Retiring energy minister Peter Batchelor says the $1.6 billion rollout is like going from ''telegrams to email''.

Even the government's critics support the concept of smart meters but worry that, in leading the nation, Victoria has gone too far, too fast. The program, dubbed by the opposition as the ''myki of metering'', has doubled in price.

When it committed to a universal implementation, the Brumby government promised the meters would help ''tackle climate change'' and allow householders to manage energy and reduce power costs.

The customer benefits, however, now appear shaky. The meters tell customers virtually nothing about their energy use. Households need an ''in-home display'' or web-based program to see energy use and power charges. There is no plan about who - the retailer or the householder - pays for this technology in the program's next stage.

The government has also put a moratorium on a big benefit of smart meters: time-of-use tariffs. These allow people to shift energy use to cheaper times of the day.

The tariffs have been put on hold, possibly until the end of 2011, after the government accepted it had not considered disadvantaged groups and stay-at-home families who cannot easily shift power use and could be penalised by up to $200 a year.

Todd Woody at The New York Times has an article on smart water meters in the US midwest - Smart Water Meters Catch On in Iowa.

While some California cities move to ban smart electricity meters over fears about their impact on human health, residents of Dubuque, Iowa, are embracing smart water meters.

Like smart electricity meters, smart water meters measure consumption and wirelessly transmit the data to utilities. In Dubuque, 311 households have volunteered to have smart water meters installed as part of a pilot project between the city and I.B.M. to see if giving residents information on their water use in real time will prompt them to conserve. The project is also intended to help city officials spot and repair leaks in the water system as they happen.

“The more frequently water use is monitored, the more quickly things like leaks can be detected and addressed,” Milind Naphade, program director for I.B.M.’s smarter city services, said in an e-mail. “Also, we’ll be able to better identify trends and patterns over time more quickly with this frequency.”

Many water bills are issued quarterly, so residents may not notice a spike in consumption as a result of leaks or other problems for months. The smart meters in Dubuque, on the other hand, will transmit data on a home’s water use to I.B.M. computers every 15 minutes.

Residents can go to a Web site to monitor their water use. ...

Cutting water use also saves the city energy costs as less electricity is needed for pumping, city officials noted. “What our volunteer households are accomplishing is the first step to understanding waste and ultimately the conservation of valuable resources to sustain life quality for generations to come,” Dubuque’s mayor, Roy D. Buol, said in a statement.

The pilot project began in September and will continue until December, I.B.M said. In the longer term, the city of 60,000 plans to roll out smart water meters to all of its households as part of a sustainability initiative called Dubuque 2.0.

The Age has an article on a cost benefit analysis that has been done on the Victorian smart meter rollout - Smart meters to save $5bn: report.

THE Brumby government's troubled $2 billion smart meter rollout has been given a ringing endorsement by an independent economic analysis, which found it to be ''cost effective no matter which mix of costs and benefits are used''.

The Oakley Greenwood report, to be released today, found that the benefit of rolling out the smart meters would be between $1.87 billion and $3.51 billion over 20 years and that when combined with additional demand management services the benefits would be between $2.58 billion and $5 billion over the same period.

The report found that the cost over a 20-year period of installing 2.5 million smart meters in Victorian homes would be up to $2 billion (with additional services) compared with continuing to operate current manual meters for a cost of $1.5 billion.

Energy Minister Peter Batchelor told The Age that a moratorium on time-of-use pricing, which charges households more during peak times, would remain until the end of current trials.

Digital smart meters are being installed to encourage households to cut energy use and shift to off-peak usage when power is cheaper to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The NZ Herald has an article looking at progress building a smarter grid in New Zealand - Efficiency at the flick of a switch.

Smart grids are electricity's buzzword, but, with the odd cold shower, we've felt their effects in our homes for decades.

The forerunner of energy's big hope was pioneered in New Zealand 60 years ago when ripple control was introduced to give power suppliers the ability to cut hot water heating when demand stretched generation and transmission. This relatively crude, but "sensible grid" way of avoiding blackouts or brownouts, having to build more power stations and sling more lines to meet peak demand is still around today.

Though smart grid innovators and enthusiasts are bursting with ways to refine and expand the principle, a one-way pulse that turns off your hot water will remain the mainstay of controlling demand for a while yet.

It may be decades before most New Zealanders' appliances are having a two-way conversation through smart grids, whose definitions are almost as numerous as potential applications.

At its most basic it involves better communication between utility operators and components of the grid, including transformers, power lines, meters and even home appliances. Your fridge could turn itself on and off to take advantage of cheap power rates, or your solar panel or micro-windmill could feed surplus electricity back into the national grid - and the homeowner gets paid for it. On top of those alluring prospects, New Zealand's 1.7 million residential electricity consumers could adjust their use to prevent and ease peak power loads. Trials by Mercury Energy show householders who use up-to-the-minute data can cut their use by 10 per cent.

Across the country such savings could at least delay the need to build power stations and the associated infrastructure. Allowing for future spending on power stations is inflicting growing pain - by Contact Energy's reckoning it will push the energy component of bills from around 7c to between 10c and 12c a unit for all consumers over coming years.

Reliability of networks will also improve. Transmission lines and cables will be constantly monitored for signs of distress; already the health of critical lines is monitored as regularly as every half a metre.

Around the world tens of billions of dollars is being poured into building smart grids. In the United States - where networks are in worse shape than here - about $2.1 trillion must be spent on interstate grids.

The Obama administration is investing $4.5 billion in 100 smart grid projects, to be matched dollar for dollar by private funding by utilities.

Last month General Electric launched a 10-week contest to speed global power-grid upgrades, promising investment and marketing help for the best submissions from a $260 million fund.

The company estimates there is a $260 billion market for smart-grid technologies in the next decade. GE is spending about $10 billion on environmentally friendly products by 2015.

China is also at the forefront of the smart grid push and is now drafting a five-year energy plan to include smart grid technology as one of the key industries for research and development.

Its government will provide funding to build several research centres this year to develop transmission technology connecting wind and solar power to the grid.

State Grid Corp will invest the equivalent of $50 billion this year to build a smart grid network in China, Xinhua news agency reports. The company aims to install 75 electric car-charging stations and 6209 recharging towers across 27 cities this year, according to previous reports.

In Europe, an EU directive requires that 80 per cent of member state households be equipped with smart meters by the year 2020.

In Australia, Newcastle, will become the first Australian city to move towards being on a smart grid after a $120 million initial investment by the federal government announced in June. Parts of Sydney are also included in the trial project.

So what about New Zealand? The phrase "smart grid" barely rates a mention in the draft energy strategy released last month.

TreeHugger has a post on predictions about smart meter rollouts worldwide - Progress ? 302.5 Million Smart Meters Installed by 2015.

According to Berg Insight, the worldwide installed base of smart electricity meters will hit over 300 million by 2015. The research firm states that over the next five years, smart meter technology is projected to move from 15-20% market penetration to almost 50% in Europe and North America, while Asia-Pacific will go from less than 1% to as much as 25%. But considering how many homes are hooked up to an electrical grid across the globe, and that smart meters are essential to get a smart grid up and running, can this be considered quick enough progress?

Perhaps it does mark progress, considering how cumbersome it has been for the smart grid community to create standards so all the pieces of the technological pie -- from meters to utilities to power generation facilities -- can talk to one another. And considering how reluctant some communities have been in receiving smart meter installations, due to concerns over security risks and accurate billing.

Still, progress is indeed slow enough that other companies are already making leapfrog moves that could change the direction of the smart grid -- or at least provide energy-savvy consumers with options for monitoring and minimizing their consumption. For example, Google has created an easy-to-follow dashboard, PowerMeter, for users to follow their energy use, and partnered up with The Energy Detective (TED) to make tracking energy easy. They're also making moves to partner with utilities to provide usage information and feedback to consumers. Microsoft is not too far behind with their Hohm dashboard and Blue Line device.

But while these are great solutions for now, the smart grid is a much more complicated beast that will connect everything about our power supplies, enabling more intelligent use of energy and more renewable energy sources. That's why it is important that meters get installed, standards are agreed upon, and technology put in place from start to finish, and fast. Hitting just 302.5 million smart meters worldwide by 2015 doesn't sound very speedy.

The Berg Insight report outlines issues areas around the world face with developing the smart grid, including, "increasing efficiency demands on the electricity sector to the implementation of energy policies related to power conservation, renewable generation and the security of supply. National governments play a key role in the adoption of smart meters through new future-oriented energy policies, addressing these issues."

Smart meters are a tiny fraction of the puzzle, and if they're rolling out this slowly, we are a little concerned about the speed at which governments will move with necessary policies and regulations.