Roy Perry: Open Up The System - Consumer Driven Deployments

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

Q1-2: The consumer owns the data in real time, and should be able to designate a third party, such as an Energy Management Service Provider, to have the same rights and privileges in accessing the data and acting upon it. Without real time access to usage data, consumer behavior will not change.

Q3: Today this is not possible, since the utilities have closed systems that do not allow access to this data in real time or not, whether a smart meter or “dumb” meter. All of the data flows to the utility over low bandwidth networks that are unable to carry the huge volume of realtime data generated by meters. Moreover, even if all the data could be backhauled over broadband networks, there are potentially long delays as the utilities store and sanitize the data. Utilities cite security risks in allowing direct access to meters, but all that is required is read-only access to incremental usage. A simple wireless “chirp” every watt-hour would be sufficient to allow applications to derive enormous intelligence from current usage data, which can be logged to perform trend analysis. Smart meters are not needed to do this; older “AMR” meters can be adapted to provide this function, which could save billions by avoiding unnecessary Advanced Metering Infrastructure and smart meter deployments.