‘Smart’ proposal gets failing mark

Maryland regulators are not buying one of the nation’s most ambitious plans for implementing smart meter technology like that made by Itron Corp.

In a move that surprised the industry, the Public Service Commission two weeks ago rejected an $835 million Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. program that would have installed smart meters across a system with 1.2 million customers. The proposal came with $200 million in federal stimulus money attached, a sizable chunk of $4.5 billion the Obama administration has ticketed for smart grid technology.

The commission did not reject the technology, but the way BGE planned to charge its ratepayers for a system the utility said would save those customers $2.6 billion over 20 years. Maybe, the commission said, but BGE was imposing all the risk of successful implementation on customers, some of whom would get little direct benefit.

Consumer groups argued successfully that the utility was putting itself first, customers second. Information has little value if consumers can do nothing with it, they said, and the utility’s focus should be on programs that have more immediate potential to save energy, and customer dollars.

Smart meters allow utilities and customers to better manage the use of electricity, natural gas and water. The most sophisticated systems allow users to constantly monitor consumption and prices, and adjust thermostats or appliances in response. Some enable utilities with grids overstressed by high air-conditioning demand, for example, to raise home thermostat settings as a way to reduce consumption during critical hours.

A report issued last week by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy underscored the consumer arguments. Advanced metering can be helpful, the nonprofit group said, but programs that empower consumers should come first. A lot of those kinds of programs already are available, many at low or no cost.

“People want to make good decisions,” says lead author Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, and meters are just one of the tools that help make that possible.

She says many companies are making the information consumers receive from their utilities much more useful. One compares a consumer’s household use against that of others the same size and in like-sized homes, so they can find out whether they are energy slurpers or sippers.

Itron spokeswoman Sharelynn Moore says the company knows that’s where the market is headed, and has partnered with companies like Google and Microsoft that offer some of these solutions at no cost to consumer or utility. Itron is among a group of utilities, vendors and others who in March launched the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative to foster the initiatives.

And the Spokane Valley company was among several that had submitted proposals for the kind of state-of-the-art technology BGE was pitching to the regulators, she says, but no specific technology was included in the BGE plan before the commission.

Regulators as well as consumers have a steep learning curve ahead of them, she says.

“There’s a lot of these amazing technologies that are coming on to the market.”