Yvan Castilloux: Joint Ownership of the Consumption Data

I believe that home energy usage data should be owned by either the utility or the consumer, depending on who makes the capital investments for the meters (or sub-meters). However, in either case, the other party should have the right to request access to the data.

Overall home energy consumption data from meters (such as smart meters) should be owned by the utility if they are provided by the utility. But it is in the utility’s interest to make that information available to the consumer in order to reduce peak load demand and have fair billing resolution. The consumer should have the automatic right to freely access the data. The utility, however, should respect consumer privacy. Third parties should have the right to access the data but only with permission from both the utility and the consumers. Privacy policies should ensure data access is done using proven web technologies with appropriate security and privacy.

For meters and sub-meters purchased by a consumer that measure his/her home energy loads (such as TV, computer, dish washer, fridge, car battery & thermostats) consumers should own the data. I think the consumer will also be weary of sharing information conveyed by home sub-meters. For example, the consumer might fear a thief could deduce when to break into a house with information on when lights have turned ON and OFF. Likewise, a consumer may not want to share information about when fridge doors are open or when TVs are turned ON. The consumer owns the appliances and the sub-meters; he/she should own the data.

Third parties and utilities should compete in a free market to access the data. Consumers would grant access to those who provide the right incentive. For example, utilities could provide rebates when the consumer acts on its demand-response signals, which could be appliance-specific. Third parties, such as Google or Microsoft, could provide a plethora of software services that enhance understanding of the data and supply alarms/suggestions to the consumer for load reduction (graphs, alarms, demand response signals). I strongly believe that true innovation will occur if the consumer decides who accesses the data. Think of the web 2.0 innovation spur in the last decade! As an analogy, innovation in the web not only came from Internet providers (aka the Utilities) but also from new companies, such as Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, and Facebook (aka the Third Parties) in a free market for information.

Use cases on how consumers and third parties will use energy data and the related technical requirements are not yet proven. For example, if the consumer wanted to have real-time graphs with 5-seconds updates of appliance-level power consumption, I doubt that the current utility networks would qualify. Given the number of devices that must be supported in one network (100s to 1000s), current utility wireless networks based on low-data rate frequency-hopping mesh protocols used in high-multipath environments would not meet, in my opinion, the throughput and latency requirements. Therefore, I believe real-time data access will only be technically reliable, scalable and flexible for third-party applications if energy usage is accessible in multiple ways (redundancy). The utility network should then be one alternative for the primary access to the smart meter data. In the home, the consumer, given she/he has the right to access the data, would choose the best primary gateway for her/his needs. Broadband internet over fiber optics or cable, Wifi, and 3G networks are mature and ubiquitous technologies. If these technologies are made accessible, then the smart grid—i.e. being open to new technologies—would be future proof. In order to provide real-time access, the smart meter should then provide multiple configuration mechanisms for sampling the data at different rates.