Digital Verdure

You may have heard about President Obama's recent pledge to bring 40 million smart meters into American homes and wondered if this would affect your home. That’s certainly the idea, with $11billion from the stimulus plan allocated to a nation-wide smart grid rollout. As a electricity consumers, the smart grid promises to modernize our electricity networks, cutting down our consumption and hopefully our bills. 

 Right now most Americans have "dumb" meters - that jumble of dials and indicators encased in plastic that are decipherable only to the electric company employee who walks through your yard every month. 

Conventional meters track a home's actual energy consumption, but aren't designed for residents to read.  That's a problem when combined with cheap, subsidized energy prices because homeowners and residents end up consuming power without thinking about it, as opposed to when it's cheapest or least taxing on the power grid.

With more transparent energy consumption data, bill payers can save not insignificant money just by scheduling energy-intense activities like doing laundry or running a dishwasher at off-peak times, such as later in the evening. Studies have shown that when energy consumption and pricing data is exposed to consumers, especially in real time, they use less and save more.

  Enter the Smart Grid, a layer of technology over existing power grids that exchanges demand and pricing information between the end user residents and the power companies.  With Smart Meters, consumers can monitor their energy consumption, even at the appliance level, and set controls to minimize consumption and costs. 

In terms of user experience, the goal of the Smart Meter rollout is not to force consumers to sacrifice comforts, but to give them the data they need to make informed decisions.  While the technical standards and pricing models for the smart grid are still being worked out by regulatory agencies, Obama has taken the important first step of incentivizing the industry with stimulus money. Fortunately, utilities have responded positively and pledged to roll out the Smart Grid, despite their seeming conflict-of-interest. Today, the more electricity a utility company delivers, the more revenue it earns. Together, industry and government are working on ways to “de-couple” incentives. 

As electricity consumers, we stand to benefit tremendously. If you had a device from Energy Hub, one startup of several Smart Meter startups that recently received venture funding, you could check on your refrigerator or AC's impact on your bill on a day to day basis.  That might make you think twice about cranking the AC next time the mercury rises.

Energy Hub's product suite is pictured above, with both website dashboard and iPhone app.  

CEO Seth Frader-Thompson recently explained the decision to focus on the device UI by asking, "If you were cold would you go online to turn up your thermostat?"  

That's a good question that many Smart Meter companies are grappling with as they ponder user interfaces for their technology: should they develop devices or web-based tools?  And it begs the question how one would manage their appliances if they couldn't get online (or if the appliances couldn't get a wifi signal).  But I think an equally valid point can be made for consumers preferring to pre-program appliances and HVAC like setting up autobill pay or shutting off an unused appliance via cell phone.  The Smart Grid’s greatest potential for influencing consumer behavior will be realized through integration with information technology that consumers already use in their everyday lives.  

This post was updated on 06/06/09.