GroovyGreen.com – Start Today :: Save Tomorrow

I threw this link to The Oil Drum Canada in my “pending” folder a few days ago, but it took me revisiting it tonight to see what a great idea pre-paid smart metering would be for all customers in the US. If you are not familiar with the current form of smart metering, it is the use of a readout display attached to your home electric meter that provides you information about the amount of electricity you’ve used, and the cost of that electricity based on the time of day that you are using it. This allows customers to shift electrical use to late evening hours (where there is less demand and therefore reduced prices) in order to save money.

However, a new type of smart metering was used in a Canadian program, a prepay system was implemented, whereby customers purchased energy on the open market ahead of time, and when their purchase was up, they had to seek out and replenish their card. There was a not anticipated reduction of energy use by 15% for those who participated in a trial program of this form of smart metering. From their post:

What Woodstock Hydro had inadvertently discovered was that they had managed to design a program which tapped into customers’ psychological drivers for conservation. With real-time feedback, consumers could immediately see the price consequences of any given act of consumption. By watching the display unit in their kitchen, they could see the balance on their card decrease at different rates depending on their own actions. As a result, they quickly learned for themselves how to keep that decrease as slow as possible. In short, they had been transformed from passive consumers into active consumers.

The authors argue that this type of metering would be easier for the utility companies to implement, as there would be less overhead than in more complicated real time meters with two way communication to the utility from the home (as well as more complicated bills). Also it would save on costs as meters would no longer need to be read, as well as the reduction in costs for connect and disconnect fees, as well as “bad debt” unable to be collected. Not to be neglected, the authors touch on how this would affect the less fortunate among us.

It is a new look at a way to change electric consumers habits, while saving costs for the utility corporations, and a 15-20% reduction in the consumers electric bills.  Their article is much more eloquent than I am on the subject and worth a read.