The Customer Conundrum
Having said that, the consumer adoption challenge is looking like a hairy beast. Recent research from GE and Accenture highlighted the consumer education challenge. GE discovered that 79% of Americans are unfamiliar with the term “smart grid,” and Accenture’s research revealed a significant contradiction between consumer perceptions and actual knowledge related to energy efficiency programs. However, GE’s research also demonstrated that those who understood what the smart grid is were interested in supporting it, and its basic conclusion was that “smartening the public is as critical as smartening the grid itself.” Accenture’s research supports my own sense that the missing piece in terms of getting consumers on board is a straightforward and intuitive value proposition.
As for the utility side, there have been hiccups, including concerns about smart meter accuracy at two major utilities in California and Texas. Though I don’t give much—meaning any—credibility to those claims, they highlight the importance of clearly and proactively articulating to consumers the benefits of smart metering. But utilities have no real experience marketing to consumers, and I think there are glaring and substantial risks here. For example, in March, Duke Energy started canvassing 60,000 customers to take part in a new program; after six to seven weeks, 20 people had enrolled!
Due to the smart grid’s growth, the electric power industry has attracted heavyweight talent and big name executives from tangential industries such as IT and wireless communications (actually, the smart grid can rightly be viewed as the convergence of all three sectors). It’s time to get smart about what comes next. Now we need to pull talent from another industry: consumer products and retail. One way or another, utilities need to gain the talent and skill to effectively segment their customer base and target their marketing dollars. Otherwise, there is a real chance those dollars will be spent in vain, and the pace of consumer adoption, which will pace the growth of the entire smart grid industry, could slow.
—David Leeds in an analyst at GTM Research (http://www.gtmresearch.com), where he focuses on smart grid issues. He has lectured on the subject at MIT, Stanford, and the Wharton School.
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Is anyone really surprised, or just out of touch with the majority of electricity consumers. Most utilities already offer time-demand rates that allow consumers to conserve power and money. They are at designated seasonal and daily time intervals that the consumer can plan around. Simple programmable thermostats work great in this scenario. With bidirectional "smart" meters, utilities can shed load at THEIR discretion, giving consumers no option but to go along with it quietly, or pay a variable jacked-up premium to keep the air on. Oh-Boy! Can't wait to sign up for that...
Litigation and the threat of litigation from "environmentalists" combined with Luddite government policy, have killed investment in new power plants for decades, particularly nukes that happen to have no carbon footprint. France is kicking our nuclear energy rears, including efficiently reprocessing nuclear waste into more fuel. How sad.
By buying into the premise that energy must be limited and rationing is inevitable, we have been beaten into submission and abandoned free market inventive thinking. It's breathtakingly un-American!