• Utilities can more efficiently use power generated from distributed points, such as local wind turbines and solar panels.
• Utilities can use smart meters to communicate real-time usage information to customers and offer “time of use” (TOU) pricing that could encouraging customers to modify their electricity usage to save money.
• Utilities can ask customers to reduce their energy consumption during peak energy demand.
At the household level, two-way communication with a smart power grid presents the opportunity to be more proactive about managing energy usage—beyond paying the monthly electric bill—and help utilities better manage peak loads on the grid.
This means knowing peak usage times and rates, realizing what it costs to keep the A/C on high all day, and deciding whether to change household behavior to save money. For the environmentally conscious consumer, it becomes another tool to reduce the carbon footprint. Customers can also respond—by dimming lights or reducing HVAC usage, for example—to requests by utilities to use less energy during peak times.
From a business perspective, CEDIA chairman Ken Erdmann has been watching Smart Grid issues with great interest and sees “both opportunities and threats.” The opportunity: Smart Grid is another intelligent control system that needs to be integrated into customers’ homes, giving integrators more opportunities for education and service. “A big opportunity for us will be because the customer is thinking integration and control, they will wonder what else is possible,” he said.
The threats: Erdmann expects the devices would be “plug and play” for the most part. “Plug a module in and plug the appliance into the module and allow the module to identify itself. Plug in a wireless energy monitor/dashboard—not much here for us to do.” That, however, bodes well for retailers, especially if they have installation divisions, selling a broader line of consumer electronics. Utilities, in turn, might turn to electrical contractors for installing Smart Grid-related technology in the home, but Erdmann said, “CEDIA is working to get the possible role of the integrator in front of the power companies also.”
Shawn LeMay, president of Sound & Theater, a custom integrator in Williamsville, N.Y., and a Control4 Gold Dealer, already installs energy-management systems (Control4 devices, Peak Software and TED Energy Monitors) in homes, and has integrated two of the systems with clients’ electricity-generating windmills. He hopes to capitalize on the energy-saving features of a Smart Grid once initiatives enter his market by working with utilities to integrate Smart Meters with home appliances and systems. But when LeMay has asked lower-ranking utility engineers about their local Smart Grid initiatives, he is met met with “blank stares.”
“I don’t see that we’re the guy to physically put in a Smart Meter,” LeMay said. Instead, he wants to integrate the Smart Meter with other systems—lighting, HVAC, pool systems, etc.—in the home: “I still see it being a mid-to-high-end product, just because of the [consumer’s] fear factor of cost.”
Early Participants
The technology standards for the Smart Grid are in the process of being established, but a subset of consumer technology companies, including Control4, GE, Home Automation Inc. (HAI), Universal Devices and retailer Best Buy, have been maneuvering to participate in the Smart Grid evolution into the home.
Control4 has actively pursued utility trials and projects for years, and is starting to announce resulting deals. HAI is partnering with Smart Meter firms to develop Smart Grid savvy home area network solutions for the utility market, while Michel Kohanim, C.E.O of Universal Devices, is participating in a working group focused on the Home-to-Grid standards framework.
Best Buy declined to be interviewed for this article, but the Web site GreenBiz.com recently quoted Rick Rommel, Best Buy’s senior vice president for emerging business, as saying: “When you turn to the smart grid, the ability to take complex technologies that are going to plug into the home, utilize home area networks, communicate back over broadband to utilities—it’s going to be a fairly complex system. We think that’s a place where Best Buy can take our experience in in-home systems sales, support and installation and apply it to the smart grid.”
In July, Best Buy Capital was one of three equity firms, to invest a total of $17.3 million in Control4 to accelerate the company’s emerging Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) product initiatives and to extend Control4’s sales channels. Texas-based utility Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative recently chose Control4’s EMS-100 Energy Management System for an initial rollout in 35,000 homes as a part of a larger “Sustainable Grid” project the co-op hopes to fund with an $18.84 million federal stimulus grant.
Grant or no grant, Bluebonnet aims to reduce its system load by 20 percent by 2020 and plans to eventually install Control4 EMS-100 systems in all 80,000 member homes and businesses. The five-inch monitor of the Control4 EMS-100 system will display real-time energy usage and allow customers to control a programmable thermostat. The system will also display Bluebonnet information about outages, energy conservation events and price spikes. It will also display weather reports, traffic updates, stock quotes and podcasts. Eventually, Bluebonnet will offer “time of use” energy rates.
If Bluebonnet wins the grant, the co-op’s in-house installation crews will begin deploying Control4’s EMS-100 sometime during the first half of next year and plans to complete the deployment by 2012. Without the grant, the project still will proceed but with more flexible timing.
For other utility projects, Control4 expects to contract home area network (HAN) installation to existing Control4 dealers, regional and national CE retailers with installation teams, and firms like Honeywell Utility Solutions and GoodCents, which already target energy-management installs for utilities.
Dealers who want to participate in the HAN installations have to be “ready and willing to scale their business” to meet the utilities’ installation needs, said Paul Nagel, Control4 vice president of strategic development. “It won’t be for everybody, but the dealer/retailer who sees these installations as a lead-generation tool, and who knows how to run an efficient business, can be successful. In many cases, this means separating the high-volume, lower-margin ‘production business’ from the lower-volume, higher-margin ‘custom side.’”
The goal, Nagel said, “would be to have the predictable, longer-term scheduled installations from the utility installations be the stable income stream for our dealers.”
GE’s Energy Goals
GE is working the Smart Grid evolution from multiple divisions, including GE Energy (power generation, transmission and metering), GE Digital Energy (power grid QA/QC and measurement), and also GE Consumer & Industrial (appliances, lighting products and electrical distribution). By 2015, the company plans to offer consumers and home builders a portfolio of products that will allow homeowners to consume, manage and generate electricity to enable an overall net zero annual energy cost—including a home energy manager and a line of smart thermostats due next year.
GE is already selling—in limited quantities to utilities and research labs—production models of Energy Management/Demand Response Appliances capable of communicating with utility Smart Meters. It’s also providing consumers options for deferring energy consumption during times of peak energy demand.
GE’s goal for its demand-response appliances, said Michael Beyerle, marketing manager of Innovation, GE Consumer & Industrial, is to provide consumers functionality, convenience and the option to easily reduce the appliance’s peak-load energy drain. For example, consumers could opt to delay their refrigerator defrost cycle or delay running their dishwasher until their utility’s off-peak period. A clothes washer could be run after peak, or wash clothes in cold water during peak periods. With all of the demand-response appliance features, the consumer can override the energy-conservation options, he said.
Utilities will have to roll out smart meters and time-of-use pricing before demand response appliances make sense to the consumer, Beyerle said. He expects that retail sales of those appliances will begin in 2011 and will be tied to the rollout of TOU pricing. “At that point consumers will have a need for smart appliances,” he said.
GE’s Consumer & Industrial division has informally briefed retail partners and buying groups about its Net Zero Home goals and its demand response appliance plans, but plans more briefings in late 2010.
The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) is pushing for federal incentives that will force manufacturers to build smart appliances more quickly and more broadly, said Kevin Messner, AHAM’s vice president of government relations. “The more incentives that are out there, the quicker this would be done.”
But even now, Beyerle said, “It’s worth a dealer’s trouble to understand their local utility, local utility rates and the changes that may be coming in their local utility.” Major appliance customers will want to know if they are buying the right product in light of utility plans, he added. “Consumers will gain a certain amount of information from GE commercials and Web site, but retailers are instrumental in educating the consumer,” Beyerle said.
" Utilities can * ASK * customers to reduce their energy consumption during peak energy demand. "
There will not be any asking it will be done for them by the energy czar who will decided who is worthy and who is not. It will depend on how you voted, or if you are member of the party in power. This is not a good thing folks.