Gale Horst - Comments on the AHAM White Paper Released 14-Dec-2009

This link should take you to the AHAM
white paper:    http://www.aham.org/smartgrid

 

AHAM and the industry they represent
should be congratulated for taking the effort to review the issues and clarify
their position via this white paper.  As a consumer-focused industry that
is independent from the energy industry, this is a bold step and represents a
level of commitment to the development of a smart grid.  As you know, I
spent the greater part of 8 years building a perspective for the appliance
industry with a charter to see how appliance design should (or will) be
impacted by changes envisioned in the energy industry. Below I commented on several
points AHAM seems to be making in the white paper.  Note that these are my
personal observations and don’t necessarily represent those of any
particular organization:

 

 
Regulatory impact:  Page
     iii states “existing residential
     tariffs and rate structures do not provide sufficient economic incentive
     to spur maximum consumer participation in the use of Smart Grid
     technologies”.  Page 10 continues this thought with
     “tariffs that would encourage
     widespread adoption of these practices are currently not in place”
     and “The pricing structure must
     allow manufacturers to build devices or appliances that are capable of
     managing this benefit and provide consumers with the proper incentives.”
     

 

 
Appropriate consumer electricity pricing will be
     the key driver to motivate development and consumer acceptance: 
     Combine the regulatory issue AHAM raised (see #1 above) with several other
     statements in the document regarding “the consumer as the decision maker” it leads to a
     conclusion that AHAM feels appropriate pricing is the appropriate the
     motivator for manufacturer and consumer acceptance. 

 

 
Scalability and flexibility in the appliance path
     to the smart grid:  The document spoke of
     appliances that could receive messages from the smart grid (or meter), but
     in the future be reconfigured to receive their messages from a home energy
     management system (EMS).  This was
     referred to as ability to support varying levels of sophistication (p
     12).  If we loose track of this aspect we will limit the number of
     devices that can participate.  On page 12, AHAM points out the need
     for a “communication standard
     that allows seamless upgrade of the energy management inside the home.” 
     If done properly, we can eliminate the need to upgrade the appliance to
     switch from a prices-to-devices model to a home energy management system
     model.  This is also one of the concepts that tends to support the
     simple connector that Brian Seal is leading.  If the appliance shifts
     from taking input from the utility, via AMI for example, and now takes it
     from an EMS, only a simple external
     interface could be changed if necessary. 

 

 
Clear boundaries of control:  This
     could be considered as a method to minimize issues with privacy, security,
     safety and consumer acceptance and perhaps one of the more key positioning
     statements in the document.  Several issues mentioned on pages 13 -
     15 may be viewed as contrary to some current paths in the smart grid
     roadmap today.  For example “In
     all cases, the Smart Appliance will retain control of the appliance
     response to a signal from the utility company” was a
     statement I expected but perhaps one that carries differences with certain
     industry approaches.  The paper also clarified that AHAM members do
     not support an emergency comment to stop and appliance without the ability
     for a consumer to override.  The AHAM paper goes a bit further with
     the statement that “The boundary
     of the utility’s reach should end at the smart meter”.
     

 

 
One-way communication: ensures
     consumer and appliance safety, privacy, and security issues.  Several
     statements to this effect include “the
     smart meter should appear to the residence as a one-way, read-only device
     to provide pricing, usage, and requests for load reduction”. 
     Although the AHAM document did not tie all the issues addressed by one-way
     together, in summarizing and considering this issue it does seem logical
     that if the communication is only one-way, the issue of invasion of
     privacy is dramatically reduced.  Regardless of one’s position
     in the one-way vs two-way debate, we have to consider that the consumer
     privacy issue could be managed to a significant degree by limiting to
     one-way.  Another factor is that the cost of two-way may still need
     economic justification from the consumer and manufacturer perspective
     represented by these AHAM position statements.  

 

A statement in the AHAM document that
stands out as, perhaps, a summary of the position statements is “The simplest and most straightforward way for the
utility to verify that its message was received and the load was reduced is to
read the meter.” 
Perhaps AHAM is saying that the summary of their work indicates that if you
have the ability to motivate (pricing / tariff) and send a cost-effective
signal (one-way) and have focused attention on a smart meter able to be read at
any point in time, we have enabled the majority of the benefits.  The AHAM
perspective is that a simple signal followed by verification at the meter
should tell us what we need to know and that perhaps additional technology only
adds cost and risk. 

 

Gale

 

 

 

Gale R. Horst

Electric
Power Research Institute (EPRI) 

942 Corridor Park
  Blvd.

Knoxville, TN 37932 

Office: 865-218-8078

Mobile:
865-368-2603

 

http://www.smartgrid.epri.com