Smart Meters: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Electricity - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 104

Smart meters also reduce the likelihood of electricity theft, automatically inform the power
company of any disruptions in power, and provide critical information to help restore
power after an outage. Without smart meters, utilities continue to rely on phone calls from
customers to notify them of power outages.
Beyond enabling remote and constant measurement of electricity and communication
back to the utility, smart meters and their consumer displays can also provide new tools for
electricity consumers to manage their electricity use or operate home area networks. The
hope is that this energy use information will encourage customers to increase their energy
efficiency, reduce and shift electricity demand, and lower their costs. In-home displays can
provide households with detailed electricity use information and, if coupled with real-time
pricing information from the utility, this could represent a key benefit of smart meters.
In theory, users will have information on real-time electricity costs and be able to shift
their electricity use. Thus a smart meter with dynamic pricing seeks to align incentives and
mechanisms to change consumer energy use behavior. Theoretically, this will encourage
consumers to shift non-time-sensitive electricity use from peak to nonpeak times. For
example, smart meters could be linked with smart appliances which respond automatically
to signals from the utility to enable, for example, the water heater or refrigerator to
automatically reduce cycling during peak electricity periods, or the dishwasher start time
could be shifted to coincide with lower-cost electricity periods during the middle of the
night, when the least expensive generators are producing electricity. These links between
the electric system and other smart appliances within the house, business, or industrial
facility can create multiple opportunities to automate demand response and reduce peak
usage.
In some smart meter projects, the installation of smart meters also includes in-home
displays, and the in-home display is often assumed to be a critical part of AMI. But
in other projects, in-home displays are not included and not considered a standard part
of smart meter deployment; some smart meter programs rely solely on web-based and
mobile applications for communication back to electricity users, and others provide no
information at all (Weiss et al. 2009 ) . These deployment differences affect consumers'
ability to manage energy use. Recent smart meter research done in experimental “smart
homes” in Karlsruhe, Germany suggests that in-home displays are an effective way to raise
awareness about in-home energy use (Paetz, Dutschke, and Fichtner 2011 ) , yet different
smart meter initiatives have different views on the value of installing in-home displays.
For example, within National Grid's Smart Energy Solutions pilot project in Worcester,
Massachusetts, only a select subset of the pilot project participants will receive in-home
displays. While outdoor smart meters have been installed in 15,000 residences and all of
these participants will be able to log in to an online site to review their energy use, only