Category: Smart Energy

Smart Meters will need secure, low power wireless to connect to devices. This section of the blog looks at the issues around choosing these, what they enable and the opportunites to reduce energy consumption.

UK Smart Metering Plan Delayed

Today in Parliament, the UK Secretary for State for Energy and Climate Change – Ed Davey, announced that there would be a one year delay in the GB deployment of smart meters.  That’s not a great surprise to anyone.  Rather than copy what has been deployed in other countries, the UK industry has been developing specifications to make our smart metering system the most complex (and expensive) of any deployment anywhere in the world, and complexity takes time.

However, the timing is not great.  Anyone following smart meter deployment will have noticed a distinct slowdown over the past few years.  Some of the larger US utilities have already rolled out smart meters, helped by $83 billion of stimulus funding.  A significant chunk of Australia has them as well.  But as stimulus funds have dried up, so have the bulk of smart meter deployments.

The one remaining gung-ho project was the UK one, where previous ministers had been keen to pull it forward.  A lot of the rest of the world, particularly other countries within Europe, who are working out how to address the EC directive on smart metering, have been waiting and watching to see how we’re doing.  On the surface it’s looked good.  Underneath there are conflicting interests which have been building up delays.  Unfortunately the timing of today’s announcement plays to quite a lot of those underlying politics, which could further derail the future of the program.

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Green Button – The Damp Squib of Smart Energy

If Google can’t make it work, call in a US Senator.  That seems to be the approach to consumer energy engagement in the US, where shortly after the demise of Google PowerMeter, US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra challenged the energy industry to come up with an analogue of the Blue Button, called the Green Button.

The Blue Button is a good idea.  It’s a scheme, pioneered by the VHA, to let patients download their medical records in a standard format, so that they can be shared with doctors, hospitals, emergency responders and other caregivers.  It lets patients add personal and insurance information and supports a host of detailed medical data.  When it was launched it was with the expectation that it would “improve the quality of patient-clinician interactions”.  Over one million members of the VHA now use it, and it’s being adopted by other healthcare organisations in the US because of its success in improving that interaction.

The rather naive hope was that Green Button would do the same for energy, but the analogy quickly breaks down.  Whereas most healthcare workers see helping patients as an integral part of their contract, most utilities don’t.  Trying to claim any analogy between the Blue Button and the Green Button is really just a bit of sly marketing to try and disguise the fact that most utilities only want to work with their customers if it’s for their own benefit.  Utilities don’t sign a Hippocratic oath.  The only oaths they utter are those against regulators, the fuel poor, late payers and air conditioning users who don’t sign up to demand response programs.

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The Curious Cult of the Connected Thermostat

Last month, Nest Labs managed to haul in a further $80 million of VC funding for their Internet-connected smart thermostat.  That’s good news for Nest, but makes one wonder what the investors are hoping to get back?  There is no questioning its success in the US.  Nest claim to be shipping about 40,000 thermostats every month.  That equates to around 5% of the 10 million a year US market, which has historically been dominated by Emerson, Honeywell, Johnson and Lux.  But how much of the other 95% can they win?

A basic programmable thermostat in the US costs under $20, not the $250 price tag of the Nest.  As such, Nest appeals to those who like buying technology and form rather than function – it’s no surprise that it sells as an accessory in Apple Stores in the US.  It has all of the glamour and pizzazz of Apple products, but with a worrying limitation – it is just hardware – there’s no service model.  In other words, it’s a bit like an iPhone without an App Store.

There is no doubt that it’s a lot easier to use than most conventional thermostats, which seem to be exclusively designed by engineers who failed their user experience courses and want to get their own back on society.  However, there are plenty of alternatives which are cheaper, just as easy to use and which work outside the US.  And there have been for the last few decades.  But these alternatives have historically failed to sell.  That’s changed, but this new generation of connected wireless thermostats has an Achilles’ heel – they need someone to support the web service for their life, which may be ten to twenty years, and I can’t see where that’s been factored in.  So is Nest going to feather the pockets of its VC backers, or make an omelette out of their investments?

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Fifty Shades of Tariff

There’s nothing that better illustrates the sado-masochistic relationship between energy suppliers and their customers than Tariffs.  They’ve evolved to be the whip that utilities deploy to beat their users into “correcting” their behaviour.  That form of correction may be trying to limit the total amount of energy you use, or changing when you use it.  But there’s a clear message coming through – energy suppliers want to be in control of the relationship. 

It’s a concept that consumers have a problem with.  Survey after survey reports the message that consumers don’t understand tariffs.  They don’t even understand the word.  And regulators are often less than happy with multiple or complex tariffs, because they’re aware how much they confuse people.  That was highlighted in the UK earlier this year when the regulator OFGEM took the paddle to the utilities to persuade them to reduce the hundreds of tariffs in the UK to a few simple ones.  But that doesn’t stop utilities fantasising about a future where they can run riot with tariffs.  The most extreme example is now being constructed in the UK as part of the British smart metering specifications.  These allow a level of complexity that makes the most diabolic tortures devised by the Inquisition look simple.  Fighting the consumer interest corner is our Energy regulator – OFGEM, which is about to give up on persuasion and start meting out some punishment itself.

There are some valid reasons for considering complex tariffs, but these need to include consumer engagement as a fundamental feature of their development.  What is happening instead, particularly in theUK, is that tariffing structures are being developed as a technical exercise.  They are now so complex that they threaten the interoperability, cost and usability of the British smart metering roll-out, setting smart metering up to be the next major UK Government IT disaster. 

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The Smart Gasman Cometh – a Smart Metering Song

It’s almost exactly fifty years since Flanders and Swann wrote their classic comic song “The Gasman Cometh”.  With the advent of smart metering it seemed an appropriate time to update it, and give all those involved in smart metering something to sing at their Christmas parties.  I’d also recommend singing it whilst reading DECC’s First Annual Progress Report on the Roll-out of Smart Meters.  It has the advantage of being considerably shorter.

Twas on a Monday morning,
The gasman came to call.
My meter wouldn’t work,
It wasn’t being smart at all.
He put another meter in,
It took him several hours.
But it couldn’t send a reading, as the comms hub wasn’t powered!

Oh, it all makes work,
For the working man to do!

 

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