The Current - June 2011
Articles In This Issue:
- Clean Energy Award nominations accepted thru July 30
- Early bird registration rates end July 1
ARPA-E, Pepco, Lockheed Martin, GE, other industry leaders pack Summit agenda - Utilities begin installing smart meters
- Frequently Asked Questions about Smart Meters
- CETI aims to foster expertise in smart grid security
- Smart home kit cuts energy use 15 percent
- Opower aims to boost energy efficiency in Maryland
- Little research to support health claim about smart meters
- Register today! Maryland Clean Energy Summit 2011 features expert discussion, consumer information
Clean Energy Award nominations accepted through July 30
The Maryland Clean Energy Center is preparing to recognize industry leaders at the Maryland Clean Energy Summit, August 25-27.
Nominate a clean energy leader in the following categories:
- Clean Energy Champion of the Year
- Legislative Leadership
- Industry Leadership
- Advocacy Award
- Bright Light Award
- Entrepreneur of the Year
- Partnership Award
- Special Appreciation
For more information, go to the Maryland Clean Energy Awards website. Awards will be presented during the Maryland Clean Energy Summit, August 25-27.
ARPA-E, Pepco, Lockheed Martin, GE, other industry leaders pack Summit agenda
Early bird registration rates end July 1
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The agenda for the 2011 Maryland Clean Energy Summit is filling with top-level experts in transformative clean energy technologies, ways to make new technologies investment-ready, energy efficiency as a business-development tool, opportunities in carbon and nutrient markets, federal and state policy frameworks, and other topics critical to building the clean energy economy.
Dr. Srini Mirmira, for example, will discuss developing and funding transformative technologies. As the assistant director of the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Mirmira is focused on commercializing and accelerating the deployment of technology by ARPA-E funded agencies – a challenge that Mirmira faced in the private sector. Before joining ARPA-E, he served as a partner at RedShift Ventures – an early stage, venture capital firm specializing in spin-offs from universities, research centers and corporations.
Other speakers scheduled for the Maryland Clean Energy Summit this August 25-27 in Bethesda include:
- John Bryne, Director of the Delaware Sustainable Energy Utility and Center for Environmental Policy, who will discuss removing financial roadblocks to clean energy developments;
- John Palmisano, of LGE Fund official, who is credited worldwide with developing the concept of tradable environmental assets and will talk about the potential of those tradable assets to advance clean energy;
- Karen Lefkowitz, Vice President of Business Transformation at PEPCO, who will address emerging smart grid technologies, cyber security for the grid and the energy efficiency potential of smart metering infrastructure; and
- Chris Lepp, North American Sales Leader for Electric Vehicle Infrastructure with Industrial Solutions, GE, who will cover the power implications of electric vehicles and promising electrification models for Maryland.
To register for, sponsor or get more information about the Maryland Clean Energy Summit 2011, visit our web site. Maryland is building a cleaner energy future. The Maryland Clean Energy Summit 2011 will offer strategic insight on this emerging economic engine. Whether your role is in research and development, financing, marketing or deployment, this year's summit is a unique opportunity to spotlight your renewable energy and energy efficiency products and services, attract capital, and connect with other innovators in this sector.
Utilities begin installing smart meters
Workers for two Maryland electric utilities are about to install the state's very first smart meters.
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Compliments of Pepco Holdings, Inc. |
Less than a year after the Maryland Public Service Commission approved smart meter proposals by Pepco and BGE, Pepco contractor, Scope Services, Inc., is slated to begin installing the first of 300,000 meters this month – a task that will take until the end of 2012 to complete. Meanwhile, BGE is preparing to begin installations late this year of smart electric and gas meters in 2 million homes and businesses. The utility estimates it will complete that rollout by mid-2014.
While smart meters have the potential to educate consumers about their energy use and help consumers contain their consumption and costs, that revolution is not going to happen instantly.
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Compliments of Pepco Holdings, Inc. |
Customers who receive some of the earliest meters will not be able to tap into their energy-monitoring functions nor the associated pricing options immediately. Utilities plan to begin activating smart meter functions which will enable customers to monitor their hourly and daily energy use, in late 2011 or early 2012. Pepco plans to begin offering the first voluntary pricing option – a rebate for customers who reduce their electricity use during critical peak hours - later in 2012. BGE is slated to begin offering voluntary smart meter pricing options in mid-2013.
"It's a crawl, walk, run strategy," said Stephen Sunderhauf, manager of program design and evaluation for Pepco Holdings, Inc., parent company of Pepco and Delmarva Power.
The PSC's smart meter hearings in 2010 highlighted the need for extensive consumer education about smart meters. Consequently, Pepco has started distributing letters, fact sheets and online materials about smart meter installations and functions. Early this month, BGE filed a four-phase "Smart Meter Consumer Education and Communication Plan" with the PSC.
The BGE plan stresses that communications should "manage customer expectations about what smart meters will and won't deliver in the near term … Consumer communication should refrain from overselling but rather gradually phase in features and functionality messages as implementation of smart meters progress."
Delmarva Power which is awaiting a PSC ruling on its business case for smart meters, has not set a timeline for installations. Allegheny Power has not drafted plans to implement smart metering.
Frequently Asked Questions about Smart Meters
What is a smart meter?
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Compliments of Pepco Holdings, Inc. |
It's a digital meter that supports two-way communications between utilities and customers' homes or businesses via a wireless network. Smart metering technology can track hourly and daily energy use, and deliver that information to both the utility and the customer. It can also alert utilities to power outages.
How much do smart meters cost and who pays for them?
BGE, Pepco and Delmarva Power have estimated that implementing their smart meter programs will cost more than $700 million combined. The U.S. Department of Energy approved $305 million in grants to the utilities to offset those expenses and the utilities have indicated they look to ratepayers to cover remaining costs. The Maryland Public Service Commission, however, rejected a proposal to charge customers an upfront fee to cover the cost of smart meters. Instead, Maryland utilities will be permitted to apply for a rate increase if smart meters prove to be cost-effective technology.
How does the consumer benefit from smart meters?
Utilities estimate that smart meters will identify and address power outages more quickly, complete service activations faster by remote control, and generate some operational savings, such as cheaper systems of reading meters and generating bills. Beginning in late 2011 for Pepco customers and early 2012 for BGE customers, smart metering will electronically deliver hourly and daily consumption numbers to consumers, giving them the opportunity to better understand and control their energy use. The utilities plan to implement optional pricing systems (mid-2012 for Pepco customers, mid-2013 for BGE customers) that will pay incentives for conserving energy during critical peak demand hours. The utilities expect to offer other voluntary pricing options and other services to control energy use beginning in 2013.
When and how will the smart meter installations happen?
The Maryland Public Service Commission has authorized Pepco and BGE to install smart meters at the homes and businesses of all their Maryland customers. Pepco is scheduled to install all meters from June 2011 to December 2012. BGE anticipates installing meters from late 2011 until mid-2014. Both utilities have outlined plans to give customers advance notice (typically a few weeks) before an actual installation. Customers do not need to be on-hand when the installation happens unless the existing meter is indoors. Installations will cause power outages of a few minutes. In some cases, technicians will need to replace (rather than upgrade) old gas meters – a process that will cause a 30-minute interruption of gas service.
For additional information about smart meter implementation, go to the smart meter sites of BGE or Pepco.
CETI aims to foster expertise in smart grid security
Could Maryland leverage its expertise in cyber security to become an industry leader in safeguarding the emerging smart grid?
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Bjorn Frogner – entrepreneur-in-;residence at the Maryland Clean Energy Technology Incubator at University of Maryland Baltimore County – has assembled an industry working group to pursue that opportunity. After hosting two packed conferences about cyber security and the smart grid, Frogner began holding monthly meetings early this year with industry experts who are building expertise and opportunities in cyber security measures for electrical control systems. The 15-member working group includes young entrepreneurs and technology experts as well as two multi-national companies, Arinc and EADS.
"Cyber security is a highly important business in Maryland. As a state, we have already staked this out as our domain of excellence and we have a lot of expertise in cyber security for IT systems," Frogner said. "I think it should be quite easy to leverage that - take some of those skills, commitment and assets and apply them to the grid. To me, that looks like a very good opportunity."
The working group has already identified prime market niches and technologies that could fuel business developments in Maryland. In an effort to jump start the sector in the state, the working group is now looking to recruit business and technology volunteers to tackle a major smart grid-cyber security project.
"The way to get a project, to get work in a sector when you don't have any past projects to show for yourself is to do a free project," Frogner said.
The working group hopes to enlist a utility as their client and complete a project focused on one of three cyber security topics:
- Developing risk management systems for the smart grid;
- Assessing the ability of cloud computing to deliver cyber security systems for the grid; or
- Assessing the ability of the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) which was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to securely, effectively aggregate and deliver information gathered by smart meters and other smart grid devices.
"None of these are easy going types of projects," Frogner said. "They are substantive projects and if somebody spends the time, hopefully they will develop some intellectual property and get some business out of it."
For more information about CETI and its smart grid-cyber security initiatives, contact Bjorn Frogner at bjorn.frogner@umbc.edu or 443-534-7671.
Smart home kit cuts energy use 15 percent
Baffled by his own stubbornly high energy bills, C.P. Shankar built his own personal smart grid.
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C.P. Shankar. |
The Columbia-based telecommunications professional wasn't pleased to see his monthly electricity bill creep up from $300 to nearly $700 over the years. But he was annoyed and confused when the bill continued to hover between $400 and $500 a month even after the number of people living in the house dwindled from six to two.
So, Shankar – now president and chief executive officer of American Grid in Dayton, Md – and his partners developed a smart home energy network that enables homeowners to track their electricity consumption in real time and alter their usage through automated programs and common electronic devices.
American Grid's self-install kit consists of an energy monitor that clips onto a home's existing electrical panel, a computer gateway that hooks into an Ethernet port of a standard Internet router, a display panel with a digital thermostat, and several appliance controllers – plug-in devices that connect household appliances to standard outlets.
Every six seconds, the system measures both the home's total electrical consumption and the amount of electricity being drawn by each appliance hooked into a controller. The system conveys that information – along with projections of total monthly costs of appliances and the whole house - to the in-home display and a secure, web portal that can be accessed by laptops, cell phones and other devises. The system enables homeowners to remotely power down appliances or alter temperature settings. It also enables customers to set up an automated schedule to tailor the home's energy use to work schedules, vacations or other situations.
Early trials of the system have yielded impressive results, Shankar said. During a two-year trial, 200 homeowners in Texas and California recorded average electricity savings of 17 percent with individual household savings ranging from 6 percent to 23 percent. Early adopters in Maryland and New Jersey have posted average savings of 15 percent.
"These families did not go through any big, dramatic lifestyle changes after they put in the system. They just became aware of what they were using and spending," he said. "The big revelation for me, my big eureka moment was realizing that when you give people the right tools, they will make the right choices about energy."
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The trials, he added, showed that "roughly 20 percent of all the energy we use in our homes is wasted. For example, customers who had home theatre systems, found they spending $60-70 a month just to keep their plasma TV display on so the remote would activate it."
Decisions to get rid of a second refrigerator - used to chill beer, bottled water or extra meat - often saved customers $90 a month. Choosing to alter a home's temperature setting by a single degree typically trimmed 6 percent off an electricity bill.
American Grid has secured UL certification for its system and is currently working to put the smart home kit into mass production.
Opower aims to boost energy efficiency in Maryland
Opower - an Arlington-based energy efficiency company - has been tapped to help BGE educate consumers about smart meters and the opportunities they create to improve energy efficiency.
Neither company was prepared to discuss specifics of the early-stage endeavor.
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Opower, however, has developed a customer engagement platform that combines behavioral science, marketing analytics, software and user experiences to motivate individuals to conserve energy by changing simple, everyday behaviors.
Opower's Home Energy Reporting Program reaches out to utility customers through multiple media to deliver information that is customized to the household or small business, including highly relevant energy-saving actions rather than the "kitchen sink" of conservation ideas, according to OPower's web site. Monthly reports compare a customer's electricity and gas use to their neighbors' levels, illustrating 12-month trends with graphs and overall performance with smiley faces.
The company which has partnered with more than 50 utilities across America, reports that its program typically engages 85 percent of utility customers (compared to 5 percent in conventional energy efficiency programs) and consistently produces energy savings of 1.5-3.5 percent across the entire population of a utility's clientele. Earlier this month, Opower reported that its program was on track to help U.S. consumers save one terawatt hour of energy by the end of 2012 – the equivalent of taking 100,000 average U.S. homes off the grid for a full year.
Little research to support health claim about smart meters
Could smart meters pose a health hazard?
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That's a question that regulators, utilities and activists are grappling with in California, Maine and elsewhere. Activists, such as the "Stop Smart Meters" movement in San Francisco, argue that the meters generate radio frequency (RF) fields that could exacerbate electromagnetic hypersensitivity – a condition that causes some individuals to experience dizziness, fatigue, headaches, sleeplessness and heart palpitations when exposed to RF or electromagnetic fields created by cell phones, WiFi systems and other devices.
"I'm not going to pretend that I'm a scientist," said Paula Carmody, Maryland's People's Counsel and the leader of efforts to protect consumer rights in smart meter implementation plans. "But we haven't seen any evidence or studies that indicate there is a health problem."
Smart meters, according to Pepco Holdings, Inc., produce far weaker fields than other consumer devices, such as cellular and cordless phones, baby monitors and wireless routers. Smart meters generate RF fields for only a few minutes per day and the strength of the field drops significantly just six inches away from the meter, Pepco says.
Carmody, however, cautions that regulators, utilities and research agencies must remain diligent about researching the topic and conveying accurate information about smart meters to consumers.
Register today!
Maryland Clean Energy Summit 2011 features expert discussion, consumer information
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Maryland is building a cleaner energy future, and the Maryland Clean Energy Summit 2011 will offer strategic insight on this emerging economic engine. Whether your role is in research and development, financing and marketing, deployment of new technologies or personal adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency systems, this year's Summit will deliver insights and benefits to you.
Set for August 25-27 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, the summit is sponsored by the Maryland Clean Energy Center.
Join us Friday, August 26 for an expert, thought-provoking examination of Maryland's clean energy economy. Topics on the agenda include:
- Removing Financial Roadblocks to Clean Energy Developments;
- Discovering Transformative Technologies;
- The Solar Solution;
- Impacting Energy Efficiency with Smart Grid Solutions;
- The Electric Vehicle Evolution;
- Growing Business by Building the Energy Efficiency Industry;
- and Fuels of the Future.
- Affordable Biomass Heating;
- Smart Grid, Smart Savings;
- Solar Hot Water;
- Power to Choose;
- Getting into Geothermal.
Then on Saturday, August 27, we open up the summit to the public for free. The day's events are specially designed to serve consumers, homeowners and green job seekers. Seminar topics will include:
The Maryland Clean Energy Summit 2011 will also feature an expanded clean energy and energy efficiency trade show. If your company has a product or service that is of interest to clean energy stakeholders, exhibiting at the Summit is for you. It's your best opportunity for direct access to key decision makers in energy technology and jobs. The Summit offers you the opportunity to make a very effective sales call to the clean energy market here in Maryland. For more information about exhibiting at the trade show, contact Ellen Clarke at 301-738-6280 or email info@mdcleanenergy.org
Register today to sponsor, exhibit and attend the 2011 Summit at preferred rates.
We look forward to seeing you starting on Thursday night for the opening reception, all day Friday and then at the consumer events on Saturday.