One of the topics which I responded to on the recent IBM Eco Jam was “IT’s Central Role In Managing Energy & Carbon”.

This topic was raised by another analyst (again IBM has asked me not to mention participants by name but if the analyst in question sees this and wants me to name him/her, I have no problem so doing) when s/he posted the following:

Forrester’s research on energy & carbon management systems predicts that IT organizations will take on a central role in choosing, owning, and operating these systems. The challenge of managing energy & carbon emissions will increasingly be information-related, and it’s enterprise IT organizations that have the expertise to install and operate software systems of record across the entire company. Just like systems for managing customers (CRM), money, materials (ERP), and employees, carbon & energy management systems will collect, integrate, analyze, and report on the newest set of assets/liabilities that will be used by internal and external stakeholders to judge corporate performance.

Now, I have no issues whatsoever with IT organisations having a role in choosing Energy Management systems. IT’s function would involve installing and supporting the software so naturally they’d have a say in its purchase. They’d also have a role in crafting requirements documents and reviewing responses but “owning and operating” these systems? I don’t think so.

I realise part of this has to do with empire building ambitions by IT but really, since when was energy management a core competence of IT?

I absolutely realise that sustainability is all about information and data, and certainly IT has a role in ensuring that this information is always available but asking IT to own and operate energy management systems is, frankly, ludicrous. You might as well ask IT to own and operate the financial management systems.

So if not IT, who then should run these systems? I foresee the rise of a new role – the Energy manager, in companies. The Energy manager will likely report to the CFO, the COO or the CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer). The energy manager’s role will be to minimise the company’s energy (& probably water) footprint and to report savings in monetary, kWh and tons CO2.

With the increasing regulatory landscape around carbon emissions (i.e. the Carbon Reduction Commitment in the UK), carbon measurement and reporting will become mandatory for most companies. In that environment having someone specialised in energy management, responsible for this function will start to seem like a very good idea.

PG&E smart meter communication failure – lessons for the rest of us

by Tom Raftery on December 16, 2009 · 37 comments

in smart grid

 

 

 

Photo credit svale

What we have got here is a failure to communicate

The famous line from legendary movie Cool Hand Luke is the first thing that comes to mind when one hears about the fiasco which PG&E’s smart meter rollout in Bakersfield Ca. has become.

From the report on the SmartMeters.com site:

a class-action lawsuit has been filed representing thousands that will demand damages from the utility and third-parties also involved in the $2.2 billion project.

Bakersfield residents believe their new smart meters are malfunctioning because their bills are much higher than before. PG&E claims higher bills are due to rate hikes, an unusually warm summer, and customers not shifting demand to off-peak times when rates are lower.

This has to be a huge embarrassment for PG&E and their partners who are spending $2.2 billion on this project.

So what has gone wrong?

A recent report in the New York Times raises speculation that the meters themselves are to blame:

Elizabeth Keogh, a retired social worker in Bakersfield, Calif., who describes herself as “a bit chintzy,” has created a spreadsheet with 26 years of electric bills for her modest house. She decided that her new meter was running too fast.

Ms. Keogh reported to the utility that the meter recorded 646 kilowatt-hours in July, for which she paid $66.50; last year it was 474 kilowatt-hours, or $43.37.

At a hearing in October organized by her state senator, Ms. Keogh took out two rolls of toilet paper — one new, one half used up — and rolled them down the aisle, showing how one turned faster than the other. “Something is wrong here,” she said.

Scores of electric customers with similar complaints have turned out at similar hearings. At one in Fresno, Calif., Leo Margosian, a retired investigator, testified that the new meter logged the consumption of his two-bedroom townhouse at 791 kilowatt-hours in July, up from 236 a year earlier. And he had recently insulated his attic and installed new windows, Mr. Margosian said.

I spoke to good friend and fellow Enterprise Irregular Jeff Nolan earlier today after I saw him Tweet:

yeah I’m actually pretty pissed, PG&E installed a so called “smart meter” and my utility bill increased $300.

It seems Jeff was having the same problem and his bill was also up significantly over the same month last year.

There are a number of problems here – all to do with transparency and communication.

If, as PG&E say, this is because of “customers not shifting demand to off-peak times when rates are lower”, then it follows that PG&E have either failed to communicate the value of shifting demand or the time when rates are lower.

One of the advantages of a smart grid is that the two way flow of information will allow utilities to alert customers to real-time electricity pricing via an in-home display. PG&E have not rolled out in-home displays with their smart meters, presumably for cost reasons. If they lose the class-action law suit, that may turn out to have been an unwise decision.

Even worse though, in a further post on Twitter, Jeff said:

I’m waited for PG&E to put up the daily usage numbers, I won’t get those until next month for some unexplained reason

This defies belief, frankly.

It seems that PG&E’s smart grid rollout is woefully under-resourced at the back-end. What PG&E should have is a system where customers can see their electrical consumption in real-time (on their phone, on their computer, on their in-home display, etc.) but also, in the same way that credit card companies contact me if purchasing goes out of my normal pattern, PG&E should have a system in place to contact customers whose bills are going seriously out of kilter. Preferably a system which alerts people in realtime if they are consuming too much electricity when the price is high, through their in-home display, via sms,Twitter DM, whatever.

Jeff himself likened this situation to the e-voting debacle where the lack of transparency around the e-voting machines meant the whole process collapsed. In the same way, a lack of open standards around smart meters means we can only trust the smart meter manufacturers and utilities when they tell us that they are operating honestly. That is unlikely to fly.

This debacle has massive implications, not just for PG&E’s $2.2 billion smart meter rollout, but for smart meter projects the world over.

Transparency and communications failures can lead to utilities being sued by their customers, as we have seen with the PG&E example. Not a desirable situation for any company. The PR fallout from the Bakersfield rollout means PG&E will have a much harder time convincing other customers to sign up for smart meters and may potentially set back smart grid projects in California for years.

 

The smart meters may not be to blame but they are an easy target. Given that the electricity company hasn't put displays on the meters for consumers means that the consumers are suspicious and can't see their consumption and what it is costing, so it is hard to control. Duh.

Communication Failure. Yes. 100%

LEICESTER, United Kingdom — Seven PepsiCo manufacturing facilities in the United Kingdom, including the firm's largest factory in the country, have gone zero waste and no longer send rubbish to landfill, the company announced last week.

In keeping with the firm's goal to shrink its footprint worldwide, the seven plants had become zero-waste sites by the close of 2009. Five plants had hit the target by early December.

The Walkers plant in Leicester, the maker of crisps and other snacks, is the largest PepsiCo manufacturing site in the U.K.

The company cited two key ingredients to plant's success: The enthusiasm of employees and the appointment of four "waste marshals" by the plant's sustainability manager.

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The waste marshals were in charge of making sure that waste was correctly sorted and stored -- and that all their coworkers were educated about how to separate and recycle and the reasons for doing so.

At the start of 2008, the plant was sending 32.3 tonnes of waste to landfills each month. The campaign to reduce waste brought that down to 1.5 tonnes a week by the end of 2008. From there, workers brought the figure to zero in 2009.

Image courtesy of PepsiCo UK & Ireland.

 

Look at the numbers here: initially: 32.3t to landfill. end 2008: 1.5t, end 2009: zero.

The government is to delay the introduction of trading under its Carbon Reduction Commitment programme by a year it was announced today.

The scheme, which aims to reduce carbon emissions from organisations which use in excess of 6,000MWh of electricity – around £500,000 plus - a year, comes into force in April 2010.

The original plan had been to sell carbon emissions allowances to organisation based on their energy use in 2008.

However, now the Department of Energy and Climate Change has said that "to smooth the introduction of the scheme and ease the upfront costs" organisations will only have to report emissions in the first year (2010-2011) without having to buy the allowances.

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) said it will launch trading for renewable energy certificates (RECs) next month, with carbon credits to follow in early 2010.

ASX yesterday announced that futures and options contracts in RECs will start trading on 24 November.

The certificates, which each represent one megawatt hour of electricity generated from renewable energy, are earned by installing solar panels, wind turbines and small-scale hydroelectric projects.

ASX said it plans to start trading for Certified Emission Reduction (CER) futures and options contracts trading in the first quarter of 2010. CERs are the carbon credits generated through the UN-backed Clean Development Mechanism carbon offsetting schemes and are issued by approved emission-reduction projects in developing countries.

Staff at BBC Worldwide have been banned from taking domestic and short-haul flights as part of one of the most wide-ranging green travel programmes yet attempted in the UK.

Executives have been told they can only fly when travelling by train adds more than three hours to the journey. The edict, from the BBC's commercial arm, means that staff have to take the train to all domestic locations, as well as European cities as far afield as Strasbourg, Amsterdam and Bordeaux.

The reason behind this? Better CO2 outcome, but it was actually *cheaper* to take the train. So, you don't need to increase the cost of flying much to make this true for a lot of businesses.

New Scientist reports on the psychology of climate change, and references a couple of papers on the subject.

Bottom lines from this:

1/ Psychology can help how we sell the message that change is needed, and that change is good.
2/ Messages need to be tailored to the interests of individual groups
3/ 'Fitting in with the crowd' is powerful. So working with others to conserve resources works.
4/ Having information about your own consumption is really important, as are comparisons with others, but look out for data that shows people use less than their peers, which may encourage more usage.

Some quotes:

In one experiment, the researchers left information with households in San Marcos asking them to use fans rather than air conditioners at night, turn off lights and take shorter showers. Some messages simply stressed energy conservation, some talked about future generations, while others emphasised the financial savings. But it was the flyers that implored residents to join with their neighbours in saving energy that were most effective in cutting electricity consumption (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 34, p 913).

...

MOST people seem to conserve energy if provided with real-time feedback on how much they are using. But feedback can be too immediate.

...

Studies show that devices that display domestic energy usage produce savings of between 5 and 12 per cent.

Lots of useful info and links to the actual papers at newscientist.com