Alcatel-Lucent helping energy suppliers in supply chain management

Alcatel-Lucent is working with a number of major energy suppliers on delivering smart grids.

The focus is on networks that provide enhanced visibility of energy flows, more granular control of energy, pro-active real-time monitoring and enabling rapid and accurate reaction to disruption of supply when it occurs.

According to the company, the move to a distributed generation of supply was being encouraged by increased regulatory emphasis for renewable energy. Changing patterns in energy demand also are fostering the movement, it pointed out.

It added that this is happening against a background of less flexible infrastructure, in an industry where pipelines and supply networks lifecycles are measured in decades, while rapid changes in communications and IT are happening in months.

"Smart grids, or intelligent energy networks, are all about maximising asset efficiencies and control right down to the individual consumer. The goal is to increase efficient energy use and better manage supply to meet demand," said Francois Loubry, VP of Energy in Alcatel-Lucent's Services business.

It is also focusing research and development resources into new methods of energy distribution that address the major environmental issues facing the world.

Grid25 to double capacity of National Grid by 2025

Grid25, the EirGrid strategy for Ireland's future electricity transmission network, has been launched. It will involve doubling the capacity of the national bulk transmission grid by 2025.

This will be achieved through a combination of upgrading the existing network and the construction of new transmission infrastructure, in a manner that balances cost, reliability and environmental impact. As per the information available, the plan will require the replacement or upgrading of over 2,300km of power lines and the building of a further 1,150km.

The strategy involves an investment of €4 billion in essential infrastructure over the next 17 years in the period to 2025, with appropriate regulatory oversight by the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER).

The scheme will be funded through the introduction of a "transmission tariff" on domestic and commercial customers of 0.2pc. For a household receiving an average electricity bill of €100 every two months, this would equate to an increase of 20 cents on each bill until 2025.

EirGrid chief executive Dermot Byrne said: "We are forecasting growth in electricity demand of 60 percent over the period to 2025. Our role is to ensure that electricity infrastructure does not become a barrier to the social and economic development of any region or county. Grid25 is our strategic response to this challenge."

"When the Grid25 strategy is implemented, not only will Ireland be in a position to exploit our rich renewable resources, but, when fully connected to the UK and European grid, Ireland can also secure its supply and become anet exporter of electricity from renewable sources," added Byrne.

PowerCentsDC implements demand response CRM software solution

PowerCentsDC has gone live with Mincom's real-time, event-driven billing and demand response CRM software solution.

The smart billing solution supports the advanced 'smart' meter project managed by Smart Meter Pilot Program (SMPPI), a non-profit corporation in Washington D.C. It delivers demand response, time of use, critical peak and critical peak rebate pricing and daily billing information to residential customers in metropolitan D.C. using smart meters and smart thermostats provided by PowerCentDC under the programme.

"The solution plays a key role in the project by enabling us to calculate monthly bills for our PowerCentsDC customers successfully and reliably using three different dynamic pricing options," said Rick Morgan, chairman, SMPPI.

The solution will also manage the participant recruitment and enrollment process for the demand response programme.

The project was delivered through a strategic alliance between selected vendors, industry groups and the Potomac Electric Power Company (Pepco).

Morgan added that the solution has also helped in avoiding major CIS customisation expenses. "Keeping costs low is critical to the success of PowerCentsDC project. Mincom's smart billing system allows us to deliver the programme's complex, real-time rating and pricing without disrupting the local utility's enterprise CIS."

Tampa Electric launches Demand Response programme for commercial customers

Tampa Electric has received approval from Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC) to expand its Energy Planner pilot programme to all new qualified customers.

According to the company, Energy Planner allows customers to make energy consumption decisions based on near real-time energy prices by using a programmable "smart" thermostat provided by the company at no charge. Customers participating in the pilot study saved an average of one month's worth of electricity over the course of a year.

In all, Tampa Electric has added 12 new energy efficiency programmes to its roster; the company also made improvements to several longtime programmes.

Other new programmes include a Low Income programme, where qualified customers can receive a number of items geared toward increasing their home's energy efficiency.

The company has also launched a new programme for commercial customers. Known as Demand Response, the programme will pay incentives to participating commercial customers when they conserve energy at times of peak demand.

Tampa Electric has also filed a revised fuel forecast with the FPSC. Due to lower projections for 2008 and 2009 natural gas prices and the company's team members' ongoing efforts to maximise the availability of its coal-fired generating units, the bill for a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity is now projected to be almost $11 less than originally expected.

The company now expects that it will be $133 million under-recovered by year-end, compared with its original September filing projection of $209 million. The company did not seek a surcharge this year to address the under-recovery. Instead, it intends to address it through its 2009 fuel charge.

Starting in January 2009, the bill for a 1,000-kWh per month residential customer would be $128.44, compared with the original projection of $139.25. This does not reflect the company's recently announced plans to request an increase to its base rates and service charges. If approved, the base rate increase would result in an additional increase of $10, effective in May 2009.

Silver Spring Networks raises $75 million from VCs

Silver Spring Networks, a provider of smart grid technology solutions, has received $75 million VC funding, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers' (KPCB) Green Growth Fund.

The new funding, a portion of which has been reserved for strategic partners, included returning investors Foundation Capital, JVB Properties, and Northgate Capital.

The investment will help Silver Spring Networks to expand globally, according to John Doerr, KPCB Partner.

KPCB stated that Silver Spring Networks has the only true smart grid platform "which has been proven at scale". The technology allows utilities to enhance the reliability and quality of their services while at the same giving them the potential to better utilise power generating capacity, reduce carbon emissions, and improve operating efficiency.

The company's technology, which is based on the Internet Protocol suite, also enables consumers to become informed participants in managing energy consumption.

Silver Spring Networks provides its technology, systems, and services to customers including Florida Power & Light Company, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Modesto Irrigation District, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Consumers Energy, and others.

Beacon Power tests its first megawatt of flywheel energy storage

Beacon Power Corporation has built and tested an integrated matrix of ten high-power flywheels that operated together to absorb and supply a full megawatt of electricity.

The system, located in Beacon's Tyngsboro Mass. headquarters, will be the first of up to five megawatts of flywheel-based regulation capability that will be produced this year and commercially deployed to generate revenues from the provision of regulation services.

Until now, Beacon had been building and running individual flywheels in preparation for its first full megawatt implementation. Based on internal testing of an integrated matrix of ten flywheels, the company says its one-megawatt Smart Energy Matrix can ramp up and down to absorb and supply a full megawatt of power.

Bill Capp, president and CEO, Beacon Power said, "We've proven that a matrix of our Smart Energy 25 flywheels, together with associated electronics, software and other components, can store and release a megawatt of electricity."

Beacon will begin system testing in conjunction with ISO New England, during which time the flywheel matrix will respond to actual ISO test signals to absorb and supply power. This plan will allow the company to meet its schedule to interconnect live to the grid and to begin performing frequency regulation services under an ISO New England Alternative Technologies Pilot Program scheduled to start on November 18th.

The ISO New England Alternative Technologies Pilot Program, which was announced last month, will provide revenue for regulation services until permanent market rules have been developed. This process is expected to take approximately 18 months.

DOE to develop solar power storage and heat transfer projects

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced 15 new projects, for up to approximately $67.6 million, to facilitate the development of lower-cost energy storage for concentrating solar power technology.

These projects support President Bush's Solar America Initiative, which aims to make solar energy cost-competitive with conventional forms of electricity by 2015.

Selected projects are expected to promote DOE's goal of reducing the cost of CSP electricity from 13-16 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) today with no storage to 8-11 cents/kWh with six hours of storage by 2015, and to less than seven cents/kWh with 12-17 hours of storage by 2020.

The department shared selections for negotiations of award under the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), Advanced Heat Transfer Fluids and Novel Thermal Storage Concepts for Concentrating Solar Power Generation.

DOE Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy John Mizroch said, "These projects will not only spur innovation in concentrating solar power technology, but they will help meet the President's goal of making clean and renewable solar power commercially viable by 2015."

Proposals were selected from the following categories: Advanced heat transfer fluids research and development (R&D); Thermal energy storage R&D; and, Thermal energy storage near-term demonstration.

For more information, click here: http://www.energy.gov/news/6562.htm

Assessing the potential of nanoscopic meadows in driving electric cars

A report has highlighted that nanoscale meadows of grass and flowers could hold the key to increasing the amount of energy that can be stored in ultracapacitors, devices tipped to replace batteries in high-demand applications like electric cars.

The approach adopoted by Hao Zhang at the Research Institute of Chemical Defence in Beijing, China, and colleagues at Peking University is as follows: It is being said that this purpose can be served by creating nanoscale meadows of fuzzy flowers of manganese oxide (MnO), a material with a much greater capacity for ions than activated carbon.

The usually resistant MnO can be charged up to attract the ions it can store so well, and consequently the nano-meadow performs 10 times better than MnO alone. The nanomeadow's complex structure is resistant to the mechanical degradation that reduces the performance of ultracapacitors over time. The energy capacity of the new device drops by just three percent after 20,000 charge and discharge cycles, better than other high-capacity designs.

According to NewScientist.com, Mike Barnes at the University of Manchester, UK, says this is an interesting approach to improving ultracapacitor performance. But he points out that that a design ready for market needs to be even more resistant to physical degradation. In vehicles, ultracapacitors are charged during braking, which might happen about 60 times per hour in urban situations.

Flywheel systems bound to gain ground in the UPS space: analysis

Environmental factors and low-cost have propelled the European flywheel UPS market, according to an analysis from Frost & Sullivan.

The firm, in its analysis, European Flywheel UPS Markets, has shared that the market earned revenues of over €25.4 million in 2007 and estimates that it will reach €58 million in 2014. It highlighted that "green" initiatives have encouraged the gravitation towards environmentally friendly technologies such as flywheel UPS systems. The European Commission energy efficiency action plan has also helped drive the uptake of flywheel UPS systems.

"Although the technology has been in existence for a long time, it has seen widespread acceptance and increased uptake only over the past three or four years," said Frost & Sullivan's programme manager Malavika Tohani. "Flywheel UPS systems use kinetic energy, eliminating harmful emissions and disposal issues and reducing the impact on the environment."

"The total cost of ownership for a flywheel UPS is less than that of the battery-based UPS, primarily because of the lower operational costs," she said. "Moreover, this technology is energy efficient and space saving since it does not require huge storage space for batteries or cooling systems that are a part of conventional UPS systems."

It stated that ongoing efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and prevent climate change have triggered interest in alternative energy storage technologies. As awareness spreads and manufacturers ramp up R&D efforts, flywheel systems are bound to gain ground in the UPS space.

Evaluating the role of IT tools in automatic electric meter installation

smartelectricnews.com Special

Consumers are being proactively approached for the activation of programmes, in which they control electric consumption costs any time from their homes.

One such initiative was recently taken in Sweden, where Telvent completed the automatic electric meter installation for Vattenfall.

During the “Amrelva” project installation phase, Telvent acted as the main meter supplier by providing 600,000 of the 850,000 total meters, and allowed Vattenfall to bill all of its clients through remote reading of electric consumption. This real-time technology offers a benefit like reduction in billing errors, apart from increasing customer satisfaction.

Utilities like Vattenfall intend to transform their power grid by making electrical distribution more efficient, economical and secure, in addition to, in this particular case, permitting the electric company to comply with Swedish legislation requirements aimed at reducing energy consumption through performance and demand response.

The operational and maintenance phase, also managed by Telvent since 2006, is to be completed by 2011, with a six-year extension option.

Commenting on projects where consumers control consumption costs, Ignacio Gonzalez-Dominguez, Executive Vice President of Telvent’s Energy division told smartelectricnews.com that the technology exists today to make these programmes a reality.

The industry now has the tools, expertise, solution suites and finally experienced integrators to execute small pilots or large deployments such as Vattenfall’s AMI programme including 600,000 smart meters, communication and data infrastructure.

“Utilities will respond to customer demand for options and flexibility as consumers of electricity. Utility investors will demand the robust and stable distribution grids to deliver their product. And customers will become proficient in managing usage that can lead to efficient utilisation of exiting power distribution assets,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez.

On challenges in shaping up the project, Gonzalez-Dominguez referred to project management and IT tools as the main considerations.

“(It is significant) to have the right partners with clear and effective communications with the overall system integrator and the customer,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez. During the project, Telvent implemented very intensive control, weekly detailed reporting and regular meetings through all stages of the project, looking for ways to improve and quickly mitigating problems in the roll-out plan.

The IT tools in place to track, report and execute the plan, are equally important.

“In a large project like this, with so much material involved, so much customer data to manage and dispatch, it is mandatory to have the IT tools minimise the possibility of human error in the process. For example, the technicians were dispatched with PDAs used to electronically communicate a clear sequence of instructions to follow at each installation site. All this information was sent to the installer as a final outcome of the different work flows generated by utility and system integrator systems, and customer information. The up-front development of these interfaces has been an important part of the project’s success,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez.

Telvent also highlighted that it is very important to define clean-up procedures, check lists and field technician commentary to facilitate early detection of potential problems during the rollout phase while the technicians are still in the field. With a comprehensive set of clean-up routines and the PDA tools to support the installation, the company was able to avoid costly delays and additional field visits that can destroy the deployment plan.

Specifically, on factors taken into consideration while installation, Gonzalez-Dominguez said the two main factors contemplated in the project were: roll-out & logistics and system performance.

In the first one, rollout and logistics, of critical importance is the pre-planning in each geographical zone where the meters were to be installed. This planning demanded accurate customer data, specific installer work orders and route plans, equipment, specific meter types and tools needed to efficiently execute the plans in a timely fashion.

The second critical consideration, system performance and design had to insure a reliable network capable of automatic communication and detection of all meters as they came on line. During the roll-out phases of the project, Telvent’s applications monitored the system in parallel with operations to optimise data flow, ensure integrity and most importantly to validate and confirm performance targets were being met.

“Today, the system is achieving performance levels exceeding 99.70 percent,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez.

When planning a large AMI deployment, it is important to understand the need to define a very precise set of installation routines and related system support.

“Once those routines are defined and validated and the system is ready to accept the remote meter data, the attention must shift to thorough training of the installers and verification of the entire process in a pilot phase. An important milestone is created from the pilot to verify the system and process and make modifications before going into massive rollout,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez.

The AMI network management system plays a key role, with a single interface allowing operators to monitor progress, field devices as they are commissioned and overall system performance on a real-time basis for each geographical area. A powerful AMI management platform and its integration with other utility systems will be key to a successful and uneventful installation.

Work flows between both the work order management and meter data management systems is critical in feeding the overall AMI network management system with validated and high quality data in real-time, according to Telvent.


Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009 is scheduled to be held in Amsterdam on 28-29 January.

For more information, click here: www.smartelectricnews.com/demand08

Or

Contact:
Abbie Badcock ,
Smart Electric News,
abbie@smartelectricnews.com

Hitachi and Carina to jointly provide utility information solutions over GPON

In a collaboration expected to result in new revenue sources for utility companies, Hitachi Telecom (USA) is partnering with Carina Technology to provide utility information solutions over gigabit passive optical network (GPON).

The two companies are to offer the complementary advantages of reduced operational expense and increased revenue potential to utility companies that provide FTTP services using GPON technology. This combination can be achieved via:

- Operational savings through the real-time ability to read customers’ electric meters automatically, manage in-home devices for efficient management, manage pre-paid electricity service, and conduct peak demand power management functions over the FTTP infrastructure.
- Revenue generation from triple-play services, including video, data and voice and other applications that can be transported by the GPON network.

In this application, the CarinaPoint Ethernet Metering Device (EMD), which is connected to the Hitachi AMN1220 GPON system’s Optical Network Terminal (ONT) via Ethernet, resides in a collar base mounted between the residential electric socket and the electric meter at the customer’s premises. The CarinaPoint EMD is connected to the Hitachi AMN1220 GPON system’s Optical Network Terminal (ONT) via Ethernet.

Meter and management data is exchanged in real-time via the GPON network between the meter and the utility’s information systems. The AMN1220 ONT can also be powered externally from the CarinaPoint collar base, which reduces FTTP installation cost and speeds deployment.

In the context of efficient energy solutions, Carina emphasised that broadband will be essential for utilities to provide the sophisticated distribution and management capabilities.

Jay Newkirk, chief executive officer, Carina said, “Because of the bandwidth capability of FTTH, we can bring this sophisticated digital grid to life today rather than 5-10 years from now.”

Echelon ready for full-scale roll-out of its NES System in Germany

Echelon Corporation is ready for the first full-scale roll-out of its Networked Energy Services (NES) System in Germany.

The public utility of Hassfurt awarded the contract to Echelon’s NES value-added reseller partner EVB Energie AG to provide all of its approximately 10,000 customers with an advanced metering infrastructure over the next three years.

Germany recently proposed a new energy law requiring all new and remodeled homes to be equipped with smart meters by 2010 to promote energy conservation and efficiency.

EVB Energie AG highlighted that for the public utility of Hassfurt, smart metering is not only a digital metering system, but an instrument for process optimisation and customer relationship management.

“The management of Stadtwerk Hassfurt sees this instrument as an enabler of a new business segment. Only by using innovative technologies will medium-sized utility companies be able to survive in the German energy market,” said Johannes Alte-Teigeler, chairman, EVB Energie AG.

The NES advanced metering infrastructure from Echelon comprises integrated, advanced electronic electricity meters accessed via a web services based network operating system over an IP networking infrastructure.

Multiple NES meters can share a single IP connection through the use of Echelon’s power line networking technology. This drives down the per-point connection cost and enables the system to easily and cost-effectively incorporate new wide area networking technologies over the life of the system.

The system’s open interfaces allow the system to be cost-effectively expanded, adapted, and customised in ways unlike any competing system, shared the company.

ComEd customers’ electric bill to increase by six percent in Illinois

The Illinois Commerce Commission has granted Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) a delivery service rate increase of approximately $270 million.

This increase will raise the average residential customer’s monthly bill by approximately $4.50 on an average $81 monthly bill.

As per the information available, ComEd originally requested a $360 million increase last October to reflect higher costs of materials used to maintain and upgrade infrastructure, including power wires and utility poles. The increase will largely pay for the modernisation of the electricity infrastructure, replacing a century-old network of transmission lines with a smart grid.

The new rates are related only to the costs that ComEd incurs to deliver electricity to its customers.

“This increase is necessary to respond to higher infrastructure improvement costs and to support growing demand,” said Anne Pramaggiore, executive vice president of customer operations, regulatory and external affairs for ComEd.

ComEd will engage with the ICC and others to explore new Smart Grid technologies in order to empower its customers to make wiser energy choices. The ICC gave ComEd the green light to study Smart Grid technologies further as part of the utility’s proposal for a System Modernization Rider, and then to work collaboratively with other interested parties to consider smart grid issues. The collaborative effort will be followed by a formal docket filed with the ICC leading to adoption of smart grid goals, according to an ICC news release.

An offering for utilities to improve efficiency of DR programmes

Honeywell Utility Solutions has built on the success of the original UtilityPRO, making the thermostat more effective for both utilities and its customers.

The company has introduced a ZigBee-enabled version of UtilityPRO, a touchscreen programmable thermostat designed for utility-sponsored demand response programmes.

The thermostat now includes two-way communications via a ZigBee networking module, enabling utilities to tap into the smart grid and provide customers with more insight into their energy use. Two-way communication gives utilities the ability to gather detailed performance metrics, for example, so they can analyse the success of a demand response event and make any necessary changes to help achieve load-reduction goals. This ultimately provides better peak energy control.

“By adding ZigBee functionality, we’re now creating a tighter link between the utility and homeowner, helping deliver on the promise of the smart grid,” said Kevin McDonough, general manager, Honeywell Utility Solutions.

According to the company, the new version of UtilityPRO communicates with smart meters and networks using ZigBee, an open wireless networking standard. This allows utilities to further leverage their investment in the smart grid versus having to establish third-party paging networks, which are traditionally used for demand response programmes. It also provides the ability to send information directly to and receive information from the thermostat.

“By pushing relevant information to customers through UtilityPRO, utilities can empower customers to become more engaged, active participants in managing the energy grid,” said McDonough.

Utilities using Honeywell UtilityPRO to power their demand response programmes include Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, Kansas City Power & Light and CPS Energy in San Antonio, Texas.

Pilot programmes for the ZigBee-enabled thermostat are currently in development.

NCSU chosen to lead smart-grid project

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has chosen N. C. State University (NCSU) to lead a $28.5 million research initiative to transform the nation’s century-old power transmission system into a smart grid network.

The center will be known as the NSF Engineering Research Center for Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems (FREEDM Systems). It will work to develop “smart grid” technology that can store and distribute alternative energy. The technology developed at this center will distribute renewable energy on a large scale, helping to build a society based on green energy.

The Center will partner with universities, industry and national laboratories in 28 states and nine countries. It will be supported by a five-year, $18.5 million grant from NSF, with another $10 million in institutional support and industry membership fees. More than 65 utilities, electrical equipment manufacturers, alternative energy companies and “other established and emerging firms” have agreed to join the partnership, NCSU says.

“The unique vision of this (center) to enable the smooth inclusion of renewable energy sources into the power grid in a ‘plug-and-play’ mode will provide the knowledge and technology platforms the country needs to help reduce our dependency on fossil fuels,” NSF Deputy Division Director Lynn Preston said in a statement.

Alex Huang, N.C. State’s Progress Energy professor of electrical and computer engineering, will be the center’s director.

“The whole future of energy is linked”

Article: Interview with Capgemini’s Doug Houseman

smartelectricnews.com special

There is a call for greater integration of demand response and energy efficiency to ensure that investments in energy systems, technologies, and practices are integrated and optimised.

Experts acknowledge that energy efficiency and demand response, demand side management, distributed energy resources, plug in electric hybrid vehicles etc. all have to fit together into a single picture for each country or service territory.

“The whole future of energy is linked,” says Capgemini’s Doug Houseman.

“You can not pull one thread out of the tapestry and still have a complete picture,” Houseman told smartelectricnews.com.

According to Houseman, who is scheduled to speak during Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009, to be held in Amsterdam on 28-29 January this year, it is important to realise that the regulators play the biggest role in determining the future.

“They will frame the picture, providing incentives to one set of answers, ignoring others, and penalising another set. In many cases, the penalties will not be intentional, but they will exist. There is no way to design a programme that does not impact some items in a negative way, so regulators have to carefully choose what they want to do and run market simulations to see what the knock on effects are of their policy.”

Citing an example, he said, “Germany did not mean to make solar more expensive globally and reduce the overall availability of the solar power in the rest of the world. Their aggressive incentives for solar photovoltaic did just that. Even though the manufacturing costs for solar are down by more than 10 percent, the global demand for solar - the main growth is from Germany - has driven prices up on the wholesale level by more than 15 percent. This will in the long run result in more factories to handle the demand, but in the meantime, a country with one of the lowest production potentials (based on hours of available light bright enough to produce power) has cornered the market on photovoltaic cells. If Germany had not put the incentives in place, solar would not have been a viable option for most business and home owners.”

Further from the regulatory standpoint, Houseman shared his viewpoint regarding how demand response can be used effectively to manage energy use year-round, managing residential programmes and much more. Excerpts from an interview:

smartelectricnews.com: It is said that technologies that can enable demand response also can be used effectively to manage energy use year-round. How do you assess the situation?

Doug Houseman: It is true that once you have communications with your customer and/or their equipment, it is easy to use that communications all year round. In home displays, home area networks and direct load control equipment can all be used for more than the 200 hours or so that the market really needs demand reduction during peak times…it would be a shame to put in equipment and then let it sit idle more than 8,500 hours a year.

smartelectricnews.com: Can you cite example of financial benefits resulting from optimal execution of such programmes?

Doug Houseman: The best example is at Florida Power and Light – it is also one of the oldest programmes having been in existence for almost 30 years now. By 2006, as per the last time numbers were published, the programme had cost FPL about $1.1 billion dollars and saved FPL more than $8 billion dollars. The regulatory requirement is that ½ of the cost savings be given directly back to all customers – not just the ones that are part of the programme. The rest of the savings can be used to fund the programme and to make profits for FPL. There are several others that can be discussed, but this in the largest, best documented and the oldest programme in the world.

smartelectricnews.com: When it comes to installation, maintenance and data management of such programmes, what factors do you think need to be taken into consideration for enablement cost where one-time cost includes equipment installation and administration and annual maintenance cost?

Doug Houseman: It is not a simple one size fits all (situation)– residential programmes can be done along the lines of one size fits all, but commercial and industrial programmes can not. If I stick to the residential programme, there are some clear winners from regulatory rules standpoint that help with the overall programme size, pace and effectiveness:

• Allow utilities to earn their usual rate of return on the equipment (or more if you want the programme to go faster).
• Allow companies to depreciate the equipment coming out at the same pace as they would have and continue to earn the normal rate of return on the value on the books of the old equipment.
• Reduce the amount of data that has to be retained to only the amount that is really required to deal with bad bills. Most regulators require that all information be kept for several years, if you want to keep the programme costs down, determine what will make a difference for the ratepayer and the commission and allow the utility to decide what they want to keep beyond that. In a single day, a single meter will send in more than 10 times the data that a meter generates in a year with the current meters.
• Agree to a simple VEE method – most methods that are on the books today are intended for very large customers, where the difference of 2 or 3 percent can mean thousands of dollars in added costs to the business. In the home owner’s world, having 2 to 3 percent of the power in the wrong interval would normally be less than $2. Over time, the mistakes tend to even out on the smaller customers (e.g. a kilowatt hour is placed in the peak bucket one month because reading is missing, and then if it happened again the next kilowatt hour would be allocated to off peak evening up the charges).
• Allow consumers to buy most of what they want to put in their home at the local hardware or DIY center. Different customers will want different levels of knowledge and control. Make sure you provide the customers with the right information so they can buy equipment that will run with the equipment from the utility.
• Never stop monitoring the programme for equipment failures, maintenance deferral or bad consumer level devices.

If you do these six things, then the determination on how to handle the installation, maintenance and data management can be managed for a reasonable cost and customers can have choices about what they want.

smartelectricnews.com: When it comes to components of such programmes being subsidised / regulated, what role according to you national, local governments and the European Union can play in the time to come?

Doug Houseman: They will have to lead, there is no way in a regulated (or semi-regulated) market that anyone can take a substantial decision without a nod from each of the regulators they have to deal with. In the UK, there is a potential for more than a dozen regulators to get involved in these programmes.


Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009

Capgemini’s Doug Houseman is scheduled to speak during ‘DR Cost Benefit Analysis: Assess the cost to install, operate and maintain your DR & DSM programme’ of Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009, to be held in Amsterdam on 28-29 January.

For more information, click here: www.smartelectricnews.com/demand08

Or

Contact:
Abbie Badcock ,
Smart Electric News,
abbie@smartelectricnews.com