Roy Perry: Don't Bottleneck The New Grid with the Old Meter

This posted to smartgrid@ostp.gov by Roy Perry, CableLabs

Response to Q1 -- Smart meters are the most expensive form of residential gateway for residential usage data, price data, and demand response signals, for several reasons. First, they require a dedicated network to connect them to the utility. Second, they are proprietary resulting in less competition and more fragmentation of the market. Third, they are depreciated over 20 year cycles, typically, but the gateway technology in the smart meter will be obsolete in 3-5 years which is the life of network technology. This will result in huge write-offs. Other far less expensive gateways are available that use the Internet and can perform the same functions for a fraction of the cost, and if the market is allowed to be competitive, will compete with each other further driving down costs.

Response to Q2 --Absolutely – this is actually a superior approach. The use of third party gateways should not only be allowed, but should be encouraged. All of the contemplated consumer benefits of the Smart Grid, i.e., energy reduction, energy management, and demand response can all be achieved with non-utility solutions. A level playing field, where non-utilities would compete fairly with utilities, would create competition for energy management services and drive the net costs for consumers down and their options up. However, to do this, the federal government must mandate the following consumer-to-utility interface standards. This will give market entrants national markets for their solutions, rather than having to adapt to proprietary utility solutions deployed by each utility. They [the necessary consumer-to-utility interface standards] are: a simple standard for querying pricing signals from any given utility over the Internet; and a simple standard for accessing electric meter data in real-time.

Roy Perry