Uh-Oh: Maryland PSC Dumps BG&E's Smart Metering Project; Utility Exec Says He's ‘Dumbfounded’

1. Higher distribution rates per kilowatt rather than fixed charges on bills should pay for these upgrades - effectively meaning heavy users subsidize light ones which seems entirely fair and reasonable to me.

2. Residential home-area-network (HAN) networks based on Zigbee and other powerline networking standards must be deployed and perhaps financed by the distributor before implementing any mandatory time-of-use or dynamic pricing scheme. This lets the customer adjust to a world of expensive peak and cheaper off-peak power. Also seems very fair.

3. Distributors are not allowed to hand-wave away the question of backhaul (communications between the meters, other secure devices on that network, whatever carrier/ISP gets the data for billing to the distributor and for demand-response to a third party). They can't, for instance, blame satellite connections in a rural area or frequent outages on a cable network, for bad electric demand decisions. This strongly suggests distributors are being gently urged to set up their own secure networks, which in practice will either use 802.15.4 (suites like Arch Rock sells), 802.11abgn (the "Wi-Fi" standard) or powerline networking (a perfect match for HANs in the home and ITU G.hn networking when it arrives) or all of the above (perhaps the powerline networking primarily and the wireless for failover).

Maryland seems to be gently moving towards the real world model in which:

- electric distributors make more money selling the conservation, control and secure communications (to third party demand response, security, or medical monitoring companies) than they do selling the watts

- electric distributors make even more money on the spread between what they can buy smart devices for, and what the customer could pay for them over time on a bill (if the distributor can borrow at 4% and get 7% from the customer that's better margin than they make on the watts themselves)

- electric distributors eventually blow telcos and cablecos out of existence since they have installed base of poles and wires suitable to move gigabits (especially as powerline networking matures) that also let them sell watts, negawatts, smart devices that use (fewer) watts, the services watts provide (like lighting or security) and perhaps insurance.

Residential users pay less per month for total bills and only the incumbent communications cos are unhappy. OK w/me!