Promises and Pitfalls of Smart Grid - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 37

new investments in communication and network infrastructure, retraining utility personnel,
and new interactions with customers. While some of these could be beneficial, change
embodies risk.
For utilities in restructured regulatory environments, making a business case for smart
gridinvestmentsdependsuponthelegacysystemandcompetitionforcustomers.Ifautility
is in a wholesale and retail restructured environment, smart grid investments may help to
keep customers, but higher costs could also drive them away.
The potential for smart grid to disrupt utilities' conventional business models is a threat
that many are already feeling. Additional consumer-owned distributed generation and
renewables on the system could shift system costs and utility benefits. Popularly termed
the “utility death spiral,” these shifting circumstances could undermine traditional utility
businessmodels,shiftawayfrominvestmentsinlargecentralizedplants,andraisethecosts
of capital for utilities. While the changing landscape presents both opportunities and risks,
smart grid technologies are central to allowing this type of system change (Kind 2013 ;
Lacey 2013 ; Pentland 2014 ) . Chapter 6 provides more details on how high levels of wind
and solar on the German grid have slashed revenues for traditional utilities such as RWE
and Vattenfall.
2.3.3 Degraded Environmental Quality
Another potential pitfall is the possibility that smart grid could worsen, rather than
improve, environmental quality. While the majority of smart grid perspectives in the
media and within the energy sector highlight smart grid's potential for environmental
improvement, including enabling greater penetration of low-carbon renewables, for some
smart grid poses environmental concerns.
Electromagnetic Emissions May Harm Human Health
Some people are worried about human health and environmental damage caused by
electromagnetic waves. Similar to concerns about high-voltage power lines in the 1990's
(MacGregor, Slovic, and Morgan 1994 ), and worries over cell phones (Siegrist et al. 2005 ) ,
a small but vocal community is concerned about the cumulative effect of exposure to
radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMF) in the radio frequency (RF) band from the
wireless technology used in many smart meters (Hess and Coley 2012 ). This concern
also relates to cell phones, wi-fi networks, and other technologies which emit EMF, but
many of the “Stop Smart Grid” efforts concentrate on EMF emissions from smart meters.
More details of this concern are discussed in Chapter 5 on struggles with smart meter
deployment.