CHIMSL

SMUD represents 4% of the total electrical load in California, but was recently awarded 64% of all the federal stimulus monies borrowed dollars allocated to California for a new, more smarter smart grid.

I am wont to decry the smart grid and the funding mechanisms of federal stimulus, but hey, SMUD built a fantastic vacuum cleaner earlier this year with our funding proposals and is now sucking up all those loose nickels floating around Washington. Good for us!

I hasten to add that SMUD was going to move forward with the installation of smart metering regardless of stimulatory funding. All this did, in my little opinion, was shift the burden of funding the smart grid from SMUD ratepayers to general taxpayers. Now, a SDG&E ratepayer in the suburban slums of Mira Mesa, CA will file her taxes in April 2010 and get to watch a portion of that fly northward to offset the cost of a new meter installation in Orangevale. Likewise, a CenterPoint ratepayer in Houston will help fund my Elk Grovian smarter smart meter.

I will offer that my new smart meter will provide absolutely zero demand side management value to SMUD. Here's why:

• I am already knowledgeable about how and when I use electricity.
• I'm rich. Fabulously wealthy. I can afford all discretionary uses of electricity. When it's 105 outside, the AC is coming on...regardless of how much the time-of-use energy will cost me.
• If I am spurred on to use electricity more efficiently, I don't need a new meter to tell me that. Energy efficiency measures have already been employed at my housal unit using my old dumb meter.
• I will not shift any more electrical use. I will not drive to the library to enjoy publicly provided conditioned air while I wait for the price of a kWh to drop a nickel before conditioning my own air. I will not choose to read a book instead of watching TV or vice versa because some smart meter told me it's more economical to do so.
• SMUD will still have to dispatch a meter reader to my housal unit as my PV production meter is un-smart. If SMUD decides to swap that one out as well, then I will have doubled the cost to SMUD to smarten my house, offsetting all possible future gains from any supposed demand shifting.
• I always pay my bill, so SMUD will never have to utilize the remote disconnecting means that come with the meter...a hidden cost in all these meters.

My own move to a smart meter will not provide any load shifting to SMUD, as it will also likely not apply to anyone living in Land Park, Folsom, Silver Springs, Arden Arcade, or East Sacramento. Tell me that these people will sit and sweat it out inside their Garage Majals and defer air conditioning until kWh rates drop by a nickel, or Horrors! engage the public in an air conditioned public venue.

That is, demand side management won't work for a fair number of installations, say, 15%, while the remaining 85% will try but will run up against Our Way Of Life. The second refrigerator in the garage will not get unplugged when rates are high. People won't sit in the early evening dark without lighting. When it's cold at 5:00 PM the heater will come on. People won't defer watching TV until 2:45 AM. If you enable your smart washing machine to come on when rates are cheap and it starts washing at 12:05 AM, tell me our residents will get up at 12:55 AM (because the smart washing machine sent an e-message to your Boysenberry at your bedside to alert you that the clothes are done) to put them in the dryer and allow their wet clothes to sit until their smart dryer determines it's cheap enough to run.

OK. Perhaps you might defer running your dishwasher until midnight. But if you are already on time of use rates, do you really need a smart meter to tell you to do that?

When the department of transportation decided to mandate the use of the center high mount stop light (CHIMSL) on vehicles, they expected a 15% reduction in rear-end crashes because that's what study after study revealed, but in practice, while there was a marked early reduction in crashes as the lights were phased in, the actual rate didn't stay at the supposed 15% but rather reverted back nearly to the pre-CHIMSL level, a levelized 4% reduction. Perhaps, yes, an argument can be made that we've received a 4% benefit and so the new CHIMSLs are a good thing, but this represents the diminishing returns of new technologies. Side question: if your CHIMSL is burnt out, can you be stopped for a busted tail light?

I would argue that smart metering will follow a similar trend. As soon as that first ridge of high pressure parks itself over Four Corners with 109 degree days in Elk Grove, after the third day of that heat wave Elk Grovians are going to say fuck it and will turn on the AC no matter how much it costs. Yes, there will be some load shifting, but I would suggest that it ain't gonna be as big as SMUD or Smarte Grid proponents believe, particularly in light of the costs associated with managing all that data and keeping it hacker proof. This isn't just some new wiring and a new tail light, folks -- this smart grid represents technological complexity of the highest order.

I have yet to "Come to Jesus" regarding this smart grid, but in a follow on post I will describe the expected benefits to distribution automation that really should make headways in system reliability. This is where our smart grid will likely provide some very tangible benefits. More to come.