Smart Grid: Metering America Proves LA Times Wrong! - Smart Grid News

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Metering America Proves LA Times Wrong!
By Phillip Bane
Apr 23, 2008 - 5:00:00 AM

Smart meters may soon be outdated. The LA Times sure knows how to crash a party. We are here at the Metering America conference in San Diego the week of April 21, sitting alongside utilities from as far away as Dayton, Ohio and my home state, Virginia, and even more distant locations such as Ireland, Germany and Nigeria. Everyone wants to learn how to deploy smart meters.

Sunday’s LA Times Consumer Confidential column (David Lazarus), quoting Kurt Yeager from the Galvin Foundation, says that "Relative to the meters you have now, the new ones are pretty smart...Relative to the meters they should be installing, they're pretty stupid.".

Lazrus goes on to say: "Experts say it's unlikely that the utilities would be able to provide real-time pricing info to millions of customers without broadband connections." Other then Yeager, he does not name any of these experts and Yearger has told us that he woudl not agree with that statement.

Of the utilities quoted in the article, several have made presentations here and have been interviewed by Smart Grid News recently. They include Southern California Edison (SCE), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) -- see our interview with Jana Corey of PG&E below. Lazarus crititicized for not using broadband to connect the meters to their distribution grid and substations. The criticism is that these meters will not be able to talk to the Smart Grid being built to deploy them. Another criticism is that a broadband pipe should be built now, anticipating the additional data the meter and appliances behind the meter will create.

How wrong! -- Let’s lay out the reasons as simply as we can:

· Cell phones, not computers. A better analog for smart meter data use is a cell phone. The key is creating two-way communications, as Paul De Martini from SCE points out. Even if a meter was read every minute, the data stream is more like that of a cell phone than a computer. Many of these utilities are, in fact, opting for radio frequency communications (see below) to connect these meters, and that approach will work just fine. No one would argue that cell phone networks, which even now transmit more data than a meter will ever need to, are not adequate.

· Radio frequency technology will support the Smart Grid.

· Elster’s million plus radio frequency deployment supports a Smart Grid. According to Mike Tabbert, Elster’s Director of Strategic Accounts, the Elster EnergyAxis AMI solution has more than enough throughput for the Smart Grid. SGN would note that this solution is the most widely deployed two-way radio frequency mesh network AMI technology in the world.

· Florida Power & Light builds a Smart Grid with Silver Spring RF mesh network. In fact, Scott Blackburn of Florida Power & Light (FPL) told us that the radio frequency mesh network provided by Silver Spring Network (using GE meters) provided more then enough through-put for FPL’s advanced metering infrastructure applications and would fully support a Smart Grid deployment.

· No Jetson toy here. As Steve Hauser from GridPoint will tell you, utilities will have many “other” ways than the meter to communicate with home appliances. GridPoint provides some of these options with its SmartGrid Platform. The meter can continue to serve its traditional purpose of being a counter, while many other systems can be deployed that control appliances or energy usage within the home. The choices made by these Southern California utilities may have been the most rational given the cost of meters, the need to transmit limited data two-way, and the fact that there will be many other technological options later.

· Broadband is not the foundation of a Smart Grid. Lazarus’s article assumes that you need broadband connectivity to have a Smart Grid. Sounds like a broadband industry placed article. But as the rest of us know, there are many other options to communications technology that are less costly and more efficient. As we discuss below, provided you have two-way communication, a utility will be able to offer time-of-use rates (TOU) and demand response, and reward energy efficiency. The key is a two-way signal, not a broadband pipe to carry it. A strong argument can be made that broadband would be over-kill for the quantity of data that a meter produces. As most utilities will tell you, the last mile of connectivity to the meter at the home could be very expensive, and it provides very little benefit.

Erich Gunther, the Utility AMI Chairman notes ' the critical thing is to understand the requirements first and then match the best technology to meet those requirements. Utilities across North America who are part of our group are positioning themselves to cost effectively deploy Smart Grid applications over time."

QuickTake: It is really too bad that these California utilities were taken to task over their smart meter deployments, especially SCE, which has done so much to lead the way and educate other utilities about Smart Grid deployment. See the Smart Grid News web site for a SCE case study that was part of this outreach effort (but paid for by the Modern Grid Strategy).

LA Times article: Smart Meters May Soon Be Outdated

Elster web site

GridPoint web site

Modern Grid Strategy web site

Sliver Spring Networks web site

Smart Grid News Southern California Edison Case Study (PDF)

PG&E and its smart meters. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) got busy after the California energy crisis of 2001-2003, when the state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) mandated Demand Response (DR) programs. SGN interviewed Jana Corey, the utility’s Director for AMI and Smart Grid initiatives, who said that the California legislature has been supportive of AMI/Smart Grid investments. PG&E has been closely monitoring new AMI technologies and has selected smart solid-state meters that feature, among other things, processing at end points and radio devices programmable to Home Area Networks. PG&E has also invested in IT architecture that allows interfaces with just about anything, including their Meter Data Management System. They selected AMI hardware whose functionalities can be easily upgraded or modified by software changes. PG&E’s business case for investing its own capital (instead of outsourcing to managed services vendors) has become much more convincing because the cost of new technologies is coming down while at the same time these technologies enable expansion into all kinds of Smart Grid-related functions. Additionally, PG&E business cases put hard dollar values on “soft” benefits such as improved system capacity planning and dispatching. New developments for PG&E include their filing an application with California PUC for upgrading AMI smart meters and networks and their being approved for a DR “SmartRate^TM” program for customers who choose to cut back usage at high peak times.

QuickTake: PG&E found it more profitable in the long run to invest its own capital as an approach to deploying AMI and Smart Grid technologies. PECO (see separate news item nearby) opted for a managed services approach. PECO awaits a state legislative mandate for smart meters; California’s pain from its energy crisis led to PUC mandates for AMI planning. No pain, no gain?

PG&E web site

Previous SGN article on PG&E

Get your vendor to pay for your smart meter. PECO Energy is pretty smart when it comes to deploying smart meters. They got their vendor, CellNet+Hunt, to pay for them and to take the technology risk. How good can it get? SGN interviewed PECO’s Glenn Pritchard, Consulting Engineer, about AMI and Smart Grid development using the managed services business model. PECO serves 1.6M electric customers in southeastern Pennsylvania and is the state’s largest utility. They made a decision in 1999 to deploy over 2M one-way meters on a smart RF communication network. They outsourced the project to CellNet+Hunt, who deployed in 2004 their UtiliNet solution in only 36 months, 6 months sooner than scheduled. Such outsourcing can reduce both financial and technological risk for utilities. CellNet+Hunt assumed the financial risk by paying for the deployment. That was very important for PECO Energy, who did not have a cost recovery option at that time. Technologically, CellNet+Hunt assumed the risk that the system would always run and provide data. PECO pays CellNet+Hunt a monthly fee for the meter data and works closely with their vendor to manage the network and data delivery.

PECO may replace its “dumb” meters with smart ones if the Pennsylvania legislature mandates smart meters and includes cost recovery incentives. For now, according to Pritchard, PECO wants to stabilize its current system and then introduce Demand Response programs. By fall, they will have introduced real-time TOU rates for 2000 customers. Full-system AMI and the integration of more Smart Grid devices are on the agenda, as well.

QuickTake: Some utilities can reduce the cost and technical risk of deploying Smart Grid technologies by using managed services from vendors such as CellNet+Hunt, while others may have the legislative support and financial and technical resources to go it alone. (See PG&E’s story nearby.) For utilities such as PECO, such managed services, especially when combined with investment cost recovery incentives, may be just what’s needed to keep AMI and the Smart Grid moving on down the track.

Exelon/PECO company website

CellNet+Hunt overview of UtiliNet

Plug and play smart meters. SGN recently interviewed SmartSynch of Jackson, Mississippi. On April 15^th, SmartSynch introduced its SmartSynch SmartRouting Solution^TM (SRS) that takes “plug & play” to a new level. According to Dr. Henry Jones, CTO, any meter a utility uses, or plans to use, can communicate with any of the utility’s AMI infrastructure and Smart Grid devices by exploiting public wireless and the Internet. Highly interoperable, SRS honors current metering standards including ANSI C12.22, which provides a common application layer that all meters can use. The system manages the delivery of critical information to any applications system, workstation, computer, or browser-enabled personal communication device. The company is not new to this business -- they serve over 50 utilities in North America and have sold more advanced meters during the past 6 years than the rest of the industry combined. SmartSynch says utilities need no new software, no new training, and no new networks for this AMI solution.

QuickTake: Granted, utilities with big investments in BPL (or utilities located where cellular coverage is an issue) may not be interested in this solution. But if you are not such a utility and you want to try out a new AMI system, why build a network if you don’t have to? Wireless and the Internet are already out there. SGN is also impressed with something that doesn’t get emphasized in the press release: This “future-proof” solution could exchange a lot of data between meters and upstream utility control functions such as Outage Management, DA, DG, DR and more. It sounds like SmartSynch’s solution might handle whatever the Smart Grid can throw at it.

SmartSynch press release

Previous SGN article on WiFi metering

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