Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative

Member Spotlight: Opower

Greg Schwartz — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:00:09 +0000

About Opower:
Founded in 2007, Virginia-based company Opower partners with utility providers to promote energy efficiency through energy information software. Opower’s platform provides Home Energy Reports, energy alerts, and online tools that help utility customers save energy and money by making small changes to their energy consumption. Recent developments include:

A social energy application, built in partnership with Facebook and the Natural Resources Defense Council, launched to 20 million households across the U.S.
A partnership with big-box retailers like Home Depot to provide additional efficiency-related discounts and targeted promotions.
A partnership with Honeywell to develop energy management tools like Web-connected programmable thermostats.

Client Base and Offerings:
Opower works with 70 utilities (including SGCC members CenterPoint Energy, Arizona Public Service Company, PG&E, and more) and its platform reaches more than 10 million households. Some of the benefits of Opower’s solutions include:

Cost-effective energy efficiency
Increased customer satisfaction
Higher participation in utility-marketed programs
Dynamic rate plan adoption
New in-home hardware adoption
Industry-leading security and privacy

Want to learn more? Visit Opower’s website.

Recent Headlines:

May 8, 2012: Opower Software Helps Utilities Save Enough Energy to Power a City of 200,000
April 3, 2012: Facebook, NRDC and Opower Join with 16 Utilities to Drive Energy Efficiency Through Social Media
January 24, 2012: Opower Celebrates 25 Millionth Home Energy Report Milestone; Savings of More Than 650 Gigawatt Hours

Smart Grid Resources: To review webinars, whitepapers, reports, and books related to energy efficiency and Opower’s approach, visit the company’s online library.

For more information about this SGCC member, visit their website, follow them on Twitter, and like them on Facebook.

In 2012, SGCC will be recognizing a member each week, providing an organizational profile and highlighting the member’s accomplishments and output in the smart grid space. Order of recognition is random and all full and affiliate members will receive a spotlight.

Friday News Roundup (5/11/12)

Greg Schwartz — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:39:06 +0000

Six steps to consumer confidence at NV Energy:
The May/June issue of Electric Energy T&D Magazine explored Nevada utility NV Energy’s six-step consumer confidence plan, designed with the help of DOE Smart Grid Investment Grant Funds with the objective of instilling consumer confidence in the NVEnergize smart grid project. Based on a “one step at a time” approach, the plan sets forth guidelines for 1) security, 2) privacy, 3) accuracy, 4) deployment, 5) verification, and 6) ownership. The six steps of the plan have been implemented sequentially at NV Energy, and the plan provides a blueprint for other utilities seeking to enlist customer support when implementing major smart grid projects. To date, the utility has deployed over 700,000 smart meters to consumers and holds that the consumer confidence plan has played a key role in the success of the program.

Read the article > >

Turning consumers into energy detectives:
In a recent Currents video, SGCC member utility Pacific Gas and Electric captures an energy saving success story wherein a local family succeeded in reducing their household energy use by 17 percent. Monitoring and analyzing their energy consumption with the help of personal smart meter data, the featured Lyons family became “consumer energy detectives” and identified areas in which they could better manage their consumption. Acting as a sample of just how the new technology can help consumers, the video is proof that with strong consumer education, customers can utilize new avenues that empower them to make more informed decisions about their usage.

View the video here > >

NOVA explores the smart grid:
An interesting video from NOVA scienceNOW illustrates the immense challenges and opportunities faced in modernizing the U.S. electricity grid. The video provides statistics about how wasteful the current grid is; for instance, it is estimated that more than 50% of energy is lost throughout the system from generation to end-use. SGCC’s recent Consumer Voices study has confirmed that consumers realize that as power demand continues to grow nationwide, the 20th century grid is likely ill-equipped to meet 21st century demand. With power perceived as paramount for modern life, consumers want their utility to keep up with the demands of the future. Overall, consumers are ready to journey into the future with the help of a smarter grid that offers greater reliability, efficiency, and ultimately savings.

Watch the video > >

NOVA explores the smart grid

Greg Schwartz — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:30:20 +0000

An interesting video from NOVA scienceNOW illustrates the immense challenges and opportunities faced in modernizing the U.S. electricity grid. In the video, Eric Lightner, Director of the Federal Smart Grid Task Force at the Department of Energy (DOE), discusses how smart grid is the best way to make the largest, most interconnected machine — the grid — more efficient, helping to save energy and protect the environment.

Studies have shown, and the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative’s (SGCC) latest qualitative research findings corroborate, that electricity consumers believe that the components of the U.S. grid are decades old and wearing out. Consumers realize that as power demand continues to grow nationwide, the 20th century grid is likely ill-equipped to meet 21st century demand. With power perceived as paramount for modern life, consumers want their utility to keep up with the demands of the future. As one consumer stated, “New technology is important to make it more reliable and efficient…because I don’t want to live in a state where they have brownouts.”

The scienceNOW video provides statistics about how wasteful the current grid is. It is estimated that more than 50% of energy is lost throughout the system from generation to end-use. The grid lacks technical capabilities to diagnose and evaluate strains on power lines, increasing the chance of blackouts from an imbalance of supply and demand. As if that is not enough to convince anyone how inefficient the grid is, approximately 25% of the cost of electricity comes from maintaining idle peaking plants operational.

Some consumers we spoke to voiced strong support for smart grid implementation to help reduce this kind of waste and make the system more efficient by better managing supply, storage, and demand. For these consumers, system efficiency means building fewer plants, reducing CO2 emissions from the air, and easier access to wind and solar energy. If smart grid improvements can offer these benefits, then this set of consumers is even willing to pay an extra $3 to $4 dollars on their monthly electric bill for them.

After learning about smart grid, most consumers said they were “favorable,” “excited,” “very interested,” and “optimistic” about the benefits that it offers. A few consumers were neutral toward its implementation, but NONE rejected smart grid. Those neutral believed that the cost of modernizing the U.S. electrical grid presents a challenge, especially if the consumer benefits are not provided or are unfounded. When asked to describe their general feelings about smart grid as being favorable or unfavorable, one neutral consumer said “…if smart grid improvements are something that they’re able to substantiate then, yeah. I don’t want it to be an idea everybody jumps on and it ends up not being as great as it sounds. But if they’ve looked at it and there’s actually some sort of benefit worth the cost…Then, I think they should do it.”

Overall, consumers are ready to journey into the future with the help of a smarter grid that offers greater reliability, efficiency, and ultimately savings.

View the video in SGCC’s resource library > >

Consumers desire a reliable grid

Greg Schwartz — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:04:14 +0000

A research consultant from Market Strategies International recently traveled around the U.S. – from East Coast to West Coast to the Midwest – on behalf of the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC) to sit down and talk to consumers about the smart grid. This effort, the qualitative underpinning of SGCC’s soon-to-be-released Consumer Voices research program, significantly enriched our understanding of the five SGCC consumer segments, how they react to the introduction of smart grid technologies for electricity distribution, and their interest in new smart grid-enabled programs and services. In addition, we also extracted some commonalities, attitudes that seemed to be expressed strongly across the segments.

A smart grid that senses problems and reroutes power automatically, preventing some outages and reducing the length of those that do occur was one such benefit, ranked as important to all consumers. This benefit was particularly appealing to consumers who have experienced long and/or frequent power outages in the past. End-users in this category considered this smart grid benefit so important that they would be willing to pay $3 to $4 dollars extra for it on their monthly electric bill.

Smart grid technology that prevented or reduced the length of power outages was perceived as something that they needed to have in order to live a modern life. A few consumers were dismayed that their utility didn’t have this capability right now. They strongly favored their utilities working now to quickly implement smart grid improvements. Going on the basis of our 24 in-person, in-depth interviews, implementing technology to improve electric service reliability and shorten the duration of outages should be a top priority for the industry, virtually all consumers agree that they really can’t live their lives without electricity.

When asked why they considered this benefit important, one consumer said “without upgrading to new technology my service is only going to get worse.” Another stated, “outages are going to be much more frequent and longer and I’m already put out and inconvenienced enough.” These consumers told us stories about the dates and length of time that their power was out. Their recollections conveyed strong emotions — frustration surrounding the uncertainty of service restoration, discomfort with sitting in the dark for hours, if not days and finally, a sense of real relief when the power was restored.

Over the coming weeks, SGCC will be providing more detailed insights about each consumer segment in terms of their individual values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward the smart grid, energy efficiency/management, and the environment.

Topline results of the Consumer Voices interviews will be shared with the SGCC research committee members on May 8th. These research briefs are intended to enhance understanding among policymakers, industry experts, utility stakeholders, and consumer advocates about what is most important to understand about each consumer segment, as well as how best to prioritize investments in the smart grid to meet their energy needs.

For more information on SGCC’s five market segments, please download our Consumer Pulse Wave 2 study here > >

Member Spotlight: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Greg Schwartz — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:00:17 +0000

About Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) is a member of the national laboratory system supported by the U.S. Department of Energy through its Office of Science. It is managed by the University of California (UC) and is charged with conducting unclassified research across a wide range of scientific disciplines.

Smart Grid Activities: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab conducts research and provides technical assistance on the development of a range of smart grid-related policies and technologies, including:

Design and Evaluation of Demand Response Programs
Independent System Operators (ISOs) and some utilities are developing a portfolio of reliability-oriented and economic demand response programs that pay customers for load reductions at critical times. LBNL assists policymakers, ISOs and utilities with program design and evaluation.
Measurement and Verification (M&V) Protocols for Demand Response Programs
Demand Response program administrators require tools for measuring and verifying customers’ actual load reductions in order to assess program impacts and system benefits. LBNL has developed M&V protocols for Demand Response programs targeted at customers without interval meters and is working on developing lower-cost, standardized M&V methods that are acceptable to ISOs and load aggregators.
Assessment of Real-Time Pricing Experience
Real-time pricing (RTP) and other dynamic pricing schemes are often advocated as cost-effective means to send demand response signals to customers. LBNL research examines customer experience with RTP, either through programs where a RTP tariff is offered as an optional service or as the default service for larger customers in selected states that have retail competition.
International Demand Response Efforts
LBNL provides technical assistance to the International Energy Agency Demand Response Resource (DRR) Program and Market Analysis project.

LBNL has also produced a number of smart grid publications, accessible here. To find out more about the lab’s work in smart grid and related fields, visit LBNL’s electricity microsite.

For more information about this SGCC member, visit their website, follow them on Twitter, and like them on Facebook.

Friday News Roundup (5/4/12)

Greg Schwartz — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:28:19 +0000

Data access becoming a clearer picture:
An article recently by Metering.com highlighted a new Utility Data Access Map tool available to consumers launched by the U.S. Energy Department. The tool, meant as a complement to the individual data access of the Green Button Initiative, allows consumers to understand better their energy usage by showing consumers at what level your utility provides data access. The map contains an option to sort utilities by state along with six different topics for different maps including benchmarking, demand response and energy efficiency, delivery of data, time period, frequency of data, and access to data. The question asked of the utilities, “to tell us how accessible their electricity use data is for both residential and commercial customers.” once answered by even more respondents will provide a robust map showing consumers exactly where they stand on data access.

Read the article > >

Consumer demonstration project to show smart grid benefits:
A new report, Investing in Grid Modernization, by the Perfect Power Institute carefully ascribes the costs and benefits of grid modernization. Costs are often cited as a key barrier to undertaking grid modernization. However, aren’t consumers already paying for it in terms of inefficiency and waste that is already part of the current system? Identifying three categories that need dire investment, the report breaks down the cost to reduce waste, achieve a clean power supply, provide 50% or more improvement to interruption/duration frequency and power quality delivery, and direct-to-consumer savings. The net-net is that the benefits from grid modernization are three-times the total estimated cost.

Download the report > >

Five more utilities sign on to Green Button:
On Tuesday, five more utilities committed to providing 8 million businesses and households with easy access to their energy use data with the click of on online Green Button. These utilities, including National Grid, PacifiCorp, PPL, TXU Energy, and Chattanooga EPB, join 15 others already participating in the Green Button program. According to the White House, more than 30 million US households and businesses now have Green Button access. In addition to new utilities getting involved, software companies EnergyAI, Melon Power, Performance Systems Development, Retroficiency, Snugg Home, and Wattvision simultaneously announced that they’re developing applications or services for businesses and consumers using the electricity data tool. In addition to helping consumers save money, the initiative creates jobs for software developers and other entrepreneurs interested in designing and marketing new products and services based on Green Button data.

Read the article > >

Data Privacy and Smart Meters Fact Sheet

Greg Schwartz — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:13:41 +0000

Ever wonder how smart meters collect data and where that data goes? Who has access to it and just how private is private data? Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative has created the 2012 Data Privacy and Smart Meters Fact Sheet, a fact sheet to show just how the process of smart meter data collection works and the protections in each step of the process for consumer privacy. The privacy of electricity usage data is protected now and that will not change with the use of smart meters. Electric companies, the federal government, and the suppliers of critical electric grid systems and components are working together to strengthen consumer safeguards, develop a best-in-class data security model and enforce its implementation.

In order to shed light on this issue, our fact sheet shows how data is collected and stored by smart meters, how information is protected, and who will have access to a consumer’s information.

Download the fact sheet > >

Friday News Roundup (4/27/12)

Greg Schwartz — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:00:35 +0000

Findings from a residential summer solutions study:
A recent article in Intelligent Utility explored a study conducted last summer by Karen Herter of Herter Energy Research Solutions, in conjunction with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In developing the report, “SMUD’s Residential Summer Solutions Study,” Herter worked with 265 residential customers in the SMUD service territory last summer to test responses to an integrated energy efficiency and demand response program. The study’s main purpose was to test the effect of three different “information treatments” on summer energy use, peak load, and “event” loads for a groups of customers exposed to dynamic pricing, traditional direct load control, or both—all with automated thermostats. Herter hopes to run the research again this summer to confirm her findings, which could give utilities several tools to apply depending on their individual needs and goals. Utilities interested in testing these solutions in their service areas are advised to find the customers who would like to participate in pilot programs and begin there, gradually adding more participants. The logic for getting started? It’s cheaper to provide smart thermostats and price signals than to build more power plants.

Read the article > >

Consumer demonstration project to show smart grid benefits:
A new announcement covered by Transmission & Distribution World detailed the new partnership between Long Island Power Authority and SGCC technology member Landis+Gyr. LIPA and its partners, Stony Brook University and Farmingdale State College, will work with Landis+Gyr’s Gridstream RF smart grid network and other AMI technology to put together a demonstration project funding by the Department of Energy that will provide, “a comprehensive assessment of the benefits of smart grid technology.” Ultimately, the project will test the consumer response to dynamic pricing signals and provide insights for the utility in scalability of smart grid technology. The project will be taking place in a corridor of Farmingdale, New York and will potentially be a demonstration of how reliability, power quality, and energy efficiency can be improved.

Read the article > >

SGCC Members Lead Industry in Green Button Initiative

Greg Schwartz — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:42:32 +0000

SGCC is proud to announce that 15 members of the organization have made commitments to support the Green Button Initiative, ultimately providing over 45 million customers with secure access to their energy data with a simple click of an online Green Button. Green Button is an industry-led effort that responds to a White House call-to-action to provide consumers with streamlined data about their household energy use.

Read the press release > >

Member Spotlight: Itron

Greg Schwartz — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:00:12 +0000

About Itron: Itron is the leading provider of energy and water resource management solutions for nearly 8,000 utilities around the world. The company offers end-to-end solutions that include electricity, gas, water, and thermal energy measurement and control technology; communications systems; software; and professional services.

Mission:
To provide critical knowledge to empower the world’s utilities to responsibly manage energy and water.

Recent Headlines:

Smart Grid Resources:
Itron offers a customer resource center that provides information to address consumer concerns about smart meter safety, security, privacy, and accuracy.

Radio Frequency:

Security and Privacy:

OpenWay Security White Paper

Accuracy:

Overview and Resources

Visit Itron’s YouTube channel to see videos on Itron’s projects, partnerships, utility customers, and more.

For more information about this SGCC member, visit their website, follow them on Twitter, and like them on Facebook.