[Offtopic] Smart Meters yesterday pls!

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Electricty Smart Meters

Over time, an economical retro-fit wireless electrical-smart-meter network
ought be required in all au buildings when tendered for sale in the future.

Like smoke detectors are law and with an easy power-hog circuit-id readout.

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Finding and Fixing a Home’s Power Hogs 

by MICHAEL FITZGERALD July 27, 2008 www.nytimes.com

WHILE we all worry about where we’re going to get more energy in an 
increasingly energy-obsessed world, there’s also another alternative: 
Use less power. 

That may soon be simpler, thanks to the introduction of a bevy of 
inexpensive devices that let homeowners monitor how much energy 
appliances, TVs, PCs, and heating and cooling systems actually use.

Even energy-conscious people can go only so far in managing their home 
energy use. Sure, we can fiddle with our thermostats, shun incandescent 
light bulbs and bring in Energy Star appliances. 

Watching that new L.C.D. TV, however, might wipe out all those gains. 

But we just don’t know. 

“We have all the technology we want in our cellphones and plasma TVs and 
cars, but in electricity we’re still like our grandparents were,” says 
Ahmad Faruqui, an economist at the Brattle Group, a consultancy based in 
Cambridge, Mass.

Possibly coming to the rescue are home automation networks, which can help 
monitor all of our power-sucking devices (the typical American household 
has 27 that are always on, according to the Electric Power Research 
Institute, an energy research and consulting firm).


Some analysts expect so-called “smart metering” to boom nationwide. 


ABI Research, a technology firm, estimates that the market will jump to 52 
million by 2013, from 560,000 this year — which would be more than a third 
of the nation’s meters. 

Good home automation networks, which run all of the electronic and 
technologic gizmos in a home, have traditionally cost more than $30,000. 

Now, thanks in part to companies like Control4 and Colorado vNet, these 
systems can be had for as little as $5,000, says Sam Lucero, an ABI 
analyst. 

Prices are expected to drop further. Will West, chief executive of 
Control4 in Salt Lake City, says that in October his firm will start 
selling a controller for $495, down from $695. 

With such a network, “you can turn on your TV and see what your energy use 
has been like in the last few months, or compare your behavior to other 
people in your area,” Mr. West says. 

Consumers can also receive automated tips on how to save money on energy, 
based on their prior energy use and historical weather patterns. Then, by 
clicking a button on a screen — either the TV or a computer — they can act 
on those tips. 

Power companies themselves also don’t know how much energy individual 
household devices use. But that information void is also poised to close, 
as inexpensive, standards-based technologies create a “smart” power grid 
that the companies — and consumers — can use to monitor home usage. 

Among the technologies adding brainpower to the grid are nascent wireless 
protocols like ZigBee; Z-Wave from Zensys; and Echelon’s LonWorks, which 
tracks power use not only wirelessly but also over power lines. 

ZigBee is on the verge of becoming the Wi-Fi of home power management, 
thanks to its inclusion in smart electric meters. 

But multiple wireless control technologies may coexist, as Wi-Fi and 
Bluetooth do. For both consumers and utilities, it’s like “going from an 
odometer to a speedometer,” says Paul De Martini, vice president of Edison 
SmartConnect, Southern California Edison’s next-generation metering 
project. It intends to introduce smart meters to its 5.3 million customers 
by 2012. 

This project is expected to help reduce peak power demand by 5 percent — 
about the output of an 1,100-megawatt power plant — and overall demand by 
1 percent. That would cut carbon dioxide emissions as much as taking 
79,000 cars off the road, Mr. De Martini says. 

In 2005, when Southern California Edison developed a plan for smart 
meters, it would have lost a billion dollars on the project. Today, under 
a proposal on which the California Public Utilities Commission is expected 
to rule in August, Edison thinks it will at least break even on smart 
meters. 

In power emergencies, such meters could allow the utility to automatically 
reduce energy demand to help avoid power failures. 

Smart meters also would allow for tiered pricing, in which customers would 
pay more for power during high-use times and less during off-peak hours. 
Large companies have had such pricing for years. 

Despite such momentum, utilities can’t just change direction the way many 
Internet companies do, cautions Bill Ablondi, director of home systems at 
Parks Associates, a market consultant based in Dallas. Mr. Ablondi doubts 
regulators and utilities will rapidly adopt smart grid technologies. 

“The technology is here, but I think we’re looking at more like a 10-year 
horizon,” he says.

FOR a planet plagued by rising energy prices and rising temperatures, 
better energy management has gigantic potential. The McKinsey Global 
Institute, the economics research arm of McKinsey & Company, projects that 
aggressive investment in energy management could keep demand nearly flat 
between now and 2020. 

But to depress growth in energy use on that scale would require more than 
just smart grids and smart homes. Governments would have to take steps 
like developing rate structures that reward efficiency, not power 
production, and eliminating write-offs for energy use. It will take a huge 
investment, too — McKinsey estimates $170 billion a year globally through 
2020 (though it promises a 17 percent return on investment). 

What smarter grids can do is help grease the rails of innovation for 
regulators and investors by showing just how much energy we waste, says 
Diana Farrell, director of the McKinsey Global Institute. The degree of 
waste, Ms. Farrell says, is so big that it makes investing in energy 
management look far more viable for fighting global warming than any 
alternative energy source. “The demand side is the answer, right now, with 
commercially available technologies that are scalable,” she says. 

Michael Fitzgerald writes about business, technology and culture. E-mail: 
mfitz at nytimes.com.
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Cheers people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia